


MCIS: First Case

by Pookaseraph



Series: Mutant Criminal Investigative Service [1]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Buddy Cops, Crime Fighting, Drama, Gen, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-24
Updated: 2011-10-07
Packaged: 2017-10-24 00:20:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/256730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pookaseraph/pseuds/Pookaseraph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik Lehnsherr considers himself a great MCIS agent, and he puts up with a lot from his boss - Moira MacTaggart - in the name of solving crimes against mutants, but he's not so sure about this new empath, Charles Xavier. Their first case together will test Erik's patience, but doubtless be the beginning of a brilliant friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, this totally wouldn't leave my head alone. MCIS. I've done my best to roll the whole team in here, but several characters take a back seat in this particular story. I'm hoping to work on a second installment of the series and focus more on the characters who are in the background here.

Erik blamed his lateness to the scene on a misplaced pillow, which he kicked his phone under in the middle of the night, and then slept on. All of this meant that when Moira rang him at 6am with news of a dead mutant, she had to call him again at 6:10am, and then 6:20am, and then 6:30am before he finally heard it and woke up, and then he had to listen to her laugh at the fact that he was either clearly hung over, or entertaining overnight company, neither of which was the case, but he did enjoy the fact that he got to brush his teeth - and spit on her - via the phone conversation where she read him the dispatch report.

"Oh, and Lehnsherr, your new team member will be there." And then she hung up on him.

Maybe he shouldn't have spit in her ear, because now he was going into a crime scene with absolutely no idea what his new team member would be. He'd made requests, of course, someone who could actually handle shooting things. Alex Summers had made an excellent addition to his team last year, but he was too green. He was great with hair, fiber, and dirt analysis, but he wasn't great with... aiming.

He arrived at the scene at 7:16, and he flashed his badge to the human at the door. Halfway up the first flight of stairs he heard the cop grumble behind him: "Another one for the freaks."

Erik just shook his head - he wasn't going to change any minds by pulling pranks - but he did have to fight down the urge to make sure the man's pants fly wasn't uncomfortably warm all day.

"What do we have?" He yelled to the room at large as soon as he walked through the door.

"Boss!" Alex was standing in the front hall and living room area of the apartment, and nearly dropped whatever he was working on - fibers it looked like. "Um..."

Great. Erik realized it was going to be one of those mornings.

"Where's the new--"

"In here!" He frowned at the voice. British?

He followed the voice down a hallway and finally caught sight of a mess of brown hair attached to neatly pressed suit. Angel was looking between Erik and the new mutant, looking slightly out of her depth - probably due to the mutant, she was more than capable with camera, notes, and occasional brawling. The new member of his team was down on his haunches near the head of the victim, but then stood, turned around, and gave Erik a bright smile. Another cheerful kid, apparently. He couldn't be more than twenty.

"Charles Xavier." He held out a hand, a hand which contained a steaming cup of some sort of coffee. Erik took it, eyes narrowed, when he finally realized that Xavier's sleeves were rolled up and he was wearing the thin, elbow length power-dampening gloves of a mutant with a powerful touch power. "Your new team member."

Erik was further pleased to see Xavier wasn't obviously armed - always a good sign. "Erik Lehnsherr."

"Mmm. A pleasure." He looked over Erik for a moment and Erik returned the appraisal. Xavier dressed like a forty year old, in a grey three piece suit that - although very nicely tailored - just made him look like a teenager playing dress up in his father's wardrobe. "Business or personal introductions first?"

"Business," Erik answered.

"Victim: Michael Summers - no relation to Alex Summers _et al._ " He actually _said_ 'et al.' Erik could barely contain the quirk to his lips, but when Xavier moved and revealed the body the humor of the situation died entirely. The kid was very obviously a mutant, some sort of gossamer, almost papery skin instead of flesh, silvery hair, buggish, maybe. He glanced towards Angel in sympathy, but she was keeping it professional for the moment.

Xavier continued, apparently deaf to the emotional undercurrents of the room. "Gun shot wounds - at least twelve discrete wounds - I was told you would -" Xavier wiggled his fingers and Erik arched an eyebrow "- take care of recovery."

Erik could already feel the various bullet fragments, some in the floor, several in the victim. He had the best chance of retrieving them intact. Xavier had been briefed on him. It made him feel... underdressed, and again he realized he probably should keep the human-baiting to a minimum when he was owed a new mutant. Erik hunched down over the victim and Angel turned her tablet towards him so he could see the how she'd labeled the entrance wounds. Erik started pulling out slugs and Angel wordlessly bagged them while they levitated over the body. The newcomer spared him a quick glance before continuing.

"Neighbors told the uniforms they heard nothing, they are, of course, lying. Neighbor to the left is lying the hardest and with the most vigor; probably saw something he wasn't supposed to. No obvious signs of robbery, no forced entry. Angel and Alex will have to inform you of any further forensic observations."

The man picked up another cup of takeaway coffee and sipped slowly. Erik spared a glance at Angel and saw she also had one settled near her side. Xavier was a suck up. He took a sip of the coffee and glared at it. Three sugars - Moira had ratted him and his sweet tooth out to Xavier.

"Body's still warm..." Angel frowned for a moment. "Metabolically impossible to know what his normal temp is but Charles says that the neighbors..."

She trailed off and Xavier gave her a smile. "Definitely didn't hear anything, of course, around 4:20."

"How many interviews did you do, Xavier?"

"Hmm? Just the one. Mrs Henderson, neighbor below who called it in - she has a very nice cat named Vincent, orange tabby, named after the painter, and a daughter at school for law in Boston..."

"Then how do you know all of the other neighbors are lying if you didn't talk to them?"

"How do you know the walls are eggshell white?"

"Because... I see it?"

"Exactly."

Erik said something very annoyed and unflattering in Yiddish. "You're a fucking empath."

"Not on the first date," he answered, _completely_ straight faced. Erik glowered at him, and then Angel, only to find that _she_ apparently thought it was funny as well, and was hiding a grin behind her tablet. "Regardless, the emotionally complex idea of 'don't talk to me, please don't talk to me, please, please, please, I don't want to see anyone, stay away, stay away' is radiating rather strongly."

"That's a little more than I'm used to getting from an empath." Erik was - begrudgingly - impressed. Less impressed when Xavier apparently caught the emotion and grinned at him.

"I'm very good at nuance," Xavier assured him.

"I somehow doubt that."

Xavier didn't even look abashed, just grinned at Erik and relaxed into an easy posture. Erik watched him roam around the room more, keeping him at the edge of his vision, trying to get a feel for him. Xavier picked up a few things - magazines, books, papers - his eyes running over them easily, followed by gloved fingers. The carefree young man he'd been only a few moments ago disappeared behind a more serious mask. Erik tugged another bullet out. Xavier poked around under the bed.

"Xavier." Xavier ignored him. "Xavier!"

"Oh, right." Charles straightened from where he was and tugged on his clothes for a moment. "Charles, please." He picked up a tablet from one of the team's bags on the floor.

Erik wasn't certain he was interested in calling the man 'Charles' just yet, but he kept that to himself. He fucking hated empaths, they were always so... touchy feely and smug, wanted to go all 'tell me about your mother' after a half-day together and Erik was very much not interested in getting psychoanalyzed. He got enough of that during his annual reviews.

"Was the kid registered?" Erik didn't care for registration, but that was the first thing that sprung to mind.

Charles handed him the tablet. "Yes. It's almost impossible not to be with a physical mutation." Erik heard a hint of distaste, but it could have been for anything. Charles didn't have an obvious mutation, Erik might have thought he was human but for the gloves.

Erik scanned the registration information. "We should check with his job."

"Not necessary," Charles answered immediately. "He left or was fired approximately five weeks ago."

Erik looked back at the registration, embarrassed that Charles had noticed that, but realized there wasn't any mention of a change in employment. "That's not in his file."

Charles shook his head, holding a pay stub between fingers for Erik. He took it - the paycheck was for only two days' work. "He could have taken vacation."

"Money troubles." Erik was starting to get a little flustered with Charles' seemingly endless supply of answers. He enjoyed an occasional Socratic quiz session with his team, but they weren't supposed to have all of the answers. Erik arched his eyebrow with an implicit 'please, continue' behind it that Charles seemed to read easily. "He's living off cup o noodles - not my personal choice, but acceptable in a pinch - a stack of unpaid bills in the kitchen -" Where Erik hadn't been yet. He hated feeling this unprepared and this off balance. A quick glance to Angel proved that she was waiting for the explosion that Charles - empathic or not - was clearly not aware of. "Also empty prescription bottles with refills remaining but no refills in the house."

Prescription... he almost asked Charles, because the man had obviously read the file, but his pride made him glare at the back of the man's head and scan it for himself. Chemical power suppressants. He felt a twist in his stomach. Charles glanced over his shoulder and caught Erik's eye, slightly sad, before he turned back away.

"Where to, Boss?" Charles asked, taking another long drink of the coffee he'd brought for himself.

Erik frowned at him. "Go see if Alex has found anything." He wanted Charles out of his head for a few moments. Charles tilted his head slightly and left the room.

Moria must have known, she clearly delighted in pissing him off like this. You needed _time_ to get prepared to be in the presence of someone with mind voodoo, get yourself psyched up, put up some mental barriers, stop thinking about elephants in the room. He glowered down at the tablet and called up Xavier's registration.

 _Charles Francis Xavier: age 26_ Even that was somehow a shock to Erik. He really didn't look that old. He skipped over the boring biographic information - mostly because he didn't want to know that about someone whose parents apparently thought 'Charles Francis' was a suitable name for a child.

 _Weapons Certifications: none_ Erik felt a twitch coming on at the corner of his eye.

 _Physical Mutations: N/A_

 _Mental Mutations: High level empathy, grade 10+_ Erik swore, mentally, almost wondering if Charles could hear him. He'd worked with empaths before, but that was ridiculous. _Empathic acuity creates the impression of borderline telepathic._

 _Special Handling: Disallowed from all S/TS/SCI facilities without psychic dampeners grade A or higher._

It was really quite impolite of Moira to have put Charles on his team. Empaths were... in a word - two words, really - fucking useful as investigators, but in Erik's experience they went completely to hell as soon as violence happened. They were uniformly pacifistic, hippy, peace and love and happiness types, and he had seen an empath go completely to pieces as soon as someone got hurt, with whimpering and whining about psychic energy and it just made Erik want to crush something. He cleared the query on the tablet and stalked out into the main living room where Charles was apparently now chatting up Alex and being particularly smiley.

Charles looked his direction and winced, a moment later he actually rubbed his temple. "If you'll excuse us, Alex, I believe Agent Lehnsherr and I are going to conduct interviews."

He _hadn't_ been thinking of conducting interviews, but he realized that was where they should be going and headed out of the room, finally ending up in the plaster-walled hallway with his back to a wall and eyes closed. Charles carefully pulled the tablet from his hands - politely not touching him - and started to tap away.

"So. How good are you?"

"I'm afraid you're going to have to be a bit more specific, Erik."

Erik brain-glowered at him.

Charles leaned up against the wall, close enough that he could feel the ghost of the man's presence even though they weren't touching. "Go ahead and say what you need to."

"I don't need you to headshrink me, Xavier."

"Please call me Charles." He didn't answer the core question though. "Do you want me to stay out of your head?"

Erik knew, intellectually, that would be almost impossible. Everyone - human and mutant - bleed like an open wound without even meaning to, thoughts leaking everywhere. It wasn't so much that Charles would stay out of his head, as Charles would just politely ignore it when Erik thought too loud. He sighed, shook his head. "No, you empaths are fucking socially awkward without the mind voodoo."

Charles let out a long breath. Relieved. Erik looked at him, surprised. "Would you like to get a feel for my interview style in a dry run, or speak to our liar?"

Erik tilted his head towards the door that Charles said was the home of the neighbor with something to hide. Charles straightened, fixed his jacket so his gloves were very clearly visible, brushing his fingers along the smooth material. "What grade?" Erik asked.

"C."

"Take them off."

Charles shook his head. "I like them."

If he was going to have an empath on his team, then he wasn't going to suffer through an empath on his team who wasn't even able to use his full abilities.

"Please trust me on this, Erik." Charles straightened the tie knotted at his throat. Erik scowled. "And try not to spike emotions, makes it harder for me to keep a read on the subject."

Erik took a deep breath and knocked on the door. He didn't need to be an empath to see the man at the door was nervous, twitchy. Beside him, Charles seemed to tense just a touch as well.

"Agents Lehnsherr, Xavier, MCIS. We'd like to ask you a few questions about your neighbor, Michael Summers." Erik gave the man his best, happy-mutant-non-predatory grin, but it was when the man saw Charles' gloved hands wrapped neatly around the tablet that he really started to sweat.

"Terrence, Terrence Mitchell."

Charles nodded, very polite as he dutifully made notes against the tablet. Erik found himself splitting his attention between Charles and Mitchell, curious at the man's approach. He seemed to not be paying any attention at all, and he realized, as their subject slowly relaxed that Mitchell was responding to Charles' body language. "You wouldn't mind if we came in, would you?" Smile. Eye contact. Mitchell swallowed, heavy. Xavier was completely fucking with the guy's head with barely a word.

"No, no, please come in."

Erik scanned the room, just a brief sweep, but Charles seemed to take it as an invitation to run his eyes over everything, he kept his hands to himself, lazily tapping the pen to the tablet while he seemed to admire each knickknack or piece of 'art' that lined the walls. "You have a very nice apartment."

That was a lie. They were in a trashy part of town in a horrible, roach infested apartment, but the assurance put the man further at ease. Charles made a brief note to himself, a quick glance to Erik and he realized Charles was urging him to go ahead with the questions.

"I'm sure you heard that Mr. Summers was killed this morning."

"Yeah..." A glance between Erik and the back of Charles' head. "Hadn't .. uh ... heard until the cops came this morning."

"How well did you know him?"

Erik settled into an easy routine, almost completely ignoring Charles' presence as the man continued to circle Mitchell's living room. He touched nothing, inspected almost everything, and made lazy notes while Erik peppered questions. He added almost nothing, asking only what Mitchell did for a living and if he enjoyed 'motor sports' which confused Erik completely. Charles slipped the questions in seamlessly between pauses in Erik's questions and Erik offered the usual 'call me if you think of anything' before he nearly dragged Charles out of the room.

"Did you even take notes of the interview?" Erik had, in paper, because tablets were annoying, but Charles had been in his own little world.

Charles handed over the tablet and Erik squinted at the messy handwriting there. It was just numbers - clearly the questions asked, with a brief notation of what each question had been about 'job', 'alibi' and notations like 'lie', 'truth', 'half-lie', 'practiced lie' next to each. After that the notations just got ridiculous: 'sex', 'violence', 'guilt', 'angry', 'happy', 'lots of sex'.

"Really?"

The empath took his notes back, heading back to the victim's room before showing Erik the notations again. "Mr. Mitchell does something of dubious legality, something he lies to a lot of people about on a regular basis."

"So? Is he a killer? An accomplice?"

"It doesn't work like that. He's really very guilty of _something_ , but my impressions are not admissible as any sort of evidence in any court of law, nor cause for a search warrant, or even necessarily further investigation along those lines." Charles shrugged. "If feeling nervous around an empath was a crime, almost everyone would be in jail."

"Dude, you're an empath?!" Alex said from his place in the bedroom door frame.

Charles winced when Alex fled the room, finally giving in and massaging his temples. "Would you like to know what I think, Erik?"

"No." Yes.

"I think we may be looking at something as simple as loan sharking for Mr. Summers. Whatever the baseline criminal activity, it was likely Mr. Mitchell who provided the introduction. He has an underlying fondness for mutants, just not ones who can touch the mind." Charles finally stopped touching his temples and Erik could almost feel the beginnings of a headache in his own skull. "He feels quite guilty."

"Are you ready for another interview, then?"

Charles nodded, flashing a huge grin. He had ridiculously blue eyes.

"And the 'sex, lots of sex'?"

"There was a couple three floors up having sex in the shower, hard to filter out."

Charles grinned at him, Erik just shook his head.


	2. Chapter 2

~2~

Erik wrapped up the investigation at the apartment complex and the team piled into two cars, Charles climbing into the passenger seat of Erik's car before promptly closing his eyes and ignoring him. Erik appreciated the moment to at least seem to be allowed his own thoughts.

"I don't care if you're an empath, you need to be weapons certified." Charles nodded, absently. "How are you even allowed out in the field without a weapons cert?" Charles shrugged. "Are you trying to be annoying?"

He nodded. Of course. Charles groaned and finally stripped off the gloves he'd been wearing since they had met, shoving them into a pocket of his jacket. With the dampening gone, Erik could... _feel_ Charles at the edge of his mind, a slightly tired presence. It wasn't clear it was Charles, just it seemed the only logical explanation. He decided that ten-pluses were more freaky than he realized. Charles winced. "On second thought..." He pulled the gloves back out.

"I'm sorry. It's not you..."

"Yes it is." Charles sighed, shook his head, but left the gloves laying on his lap. "It is me, and your reaction to me." And there was this twisted... bitterness that hit his chest and then after a barely a moment it was gone. "Sorry, sorry." Charles rubbed his temples a few times, and the feeling and Charles' presence and everything was reeled back in and Erik suddenly felt completely like himself again. "Early morning, dead body, stressed and nervous people. I could use a good spot of tea."

"You can project, then, as well as read?" He tried not to let the fact that the idea troubled him, greatly, come too close to the front of his mind, but it did.

"Yes." He didn't feel Charles' wariness, but it was obvious across his face.

"I think it goes without saying I don't want you putting stuff in my head." Charles didn't answer. "Or the rest of the team." It did, really, there were ground rules for all of the mutants with mental manip powers, whether they were agents or private citizens. "I want to know what you feel like."

"A bit forward, don't you think?" Charles wasn't smiling, though, or he was, but it wasn't a cheeky smile, just a sad, hard one. "Erik, I will be perfectly honest with you. If I wanted to make you feel something, you would feel it, and nothing in your mind would ever be able to convince you that it wasn't your idea."

"We have a telepath at work, you know..."

Charles 'mmm'ed and nodded. "Emma, we met, she's the one who did my mind sweep. She found my morality sufficiently centered, you know." Erik didn't trust Emma. Charles caught the distrust, smiled. "Well it's either that or slapping us all with null collars and calling it a day, Erik. I do enjoy every legislative session where _that_ topic is up for a vote."

The empath seemed to know exactly how to push all of Erik's buttons. He wondered how much of it was an extensive briefing from MacTaggart as opposed to just a natural ability to read Erik's reactions completely. He didn't really want to know. Erik had been opposed to registration for years, hell, he was opposed to integration, when it came to that, but at least he got to walk around with a badge and no one looked at him twice unless they realized he was MCIS. Charles wore his gloves like a weapon and armor.

Erik pulled into the agency parking garage, flashed his badge. Alex and Angel hadn't arrived yet. Charles stepped out of the car, followed after Erik slowly.

"I do want you to do it."

"Mess with your head?" Charles shook his head, gloves rolled up and tucked away in his pockets now. "No."

"You've got my permission."

"Well you don't have mine, Lehnsherr," Charles... snapped. Erik almost expected to feel a press against his mind, anger or frustration or something but there was nothing, just his own thoughts. A moment later, Charles was calm, his face sad and tired. "I would prefer to never give you a reason not to trust me. If you really must have a demonstration in order to trust me... then I am certain Moira will be happy to transfer me after I torture you for a few more days."

Erik was shocked, by the earnestness of Charles' declaration. He'd always met empaths who were only too happy to play around with how much they could read from you, poked and prodded to get a reaction and then smiled at whatever it was but Charles...

And just like that he wondered if this was some sort of manipulation, and Charles' face closed off completely, eyes hard and shuttered, and he headed towards the secure door.

"Charles..." He wasn't certain why he was bothering but... he did bother. The last empath he knew was a self-assured schmuck and Erik might have thought that was Charles, too, but it was clear that wasn't the case. "Look..." Charles actually did turn around, a few feet from the door. "I'm not going to ask Moira for a replacement. As to the rest..."

Erik wanted to tell Charles that he trusted him, but he didn't. He wished he could hide that, but he was pretty bad at keeping his emotions in check and he'd already told Charles he could listen.

Charles put out his hand, bare skin, undampened. The man certainly understood how to push Erik's limits.

Erik took his hand. _Hopefriendlywarmhappytrust_. The feeling was distinctly... _Charles_ and Erik was surprised by the intensity behind it.

"Whoa." In the intervening minutes, Alex and Angel had come up behind them, bags of evidence on a rolling cart. "Does that mean Xavier's part of the team?"

"... Yeah," Erik answered after a long moment. "Yeah, I guess it does."

The slightly warm, happy feeling that was still lingering behind from shaking Charles' hand dissipated almost instantly when he watched Charles swipe his identification, a loud beeping noise followed from the guard desk, and then he was coolly handed a collar by one of the human door guards. Charles donned it without a word, tilted his head to the guard to show the green activation light, and then waited for the other three to follow.

"You're cleared for this facility," Erik said as soon as they were out of earshot.

Charles seemed to be working off the effects of a headache, or maybe just the collar itself. "It's still a secured facility. My movement restriction makes no allowances just because I also happen to work here."

Erik felt the urge to rip the damn thing off with his powers, but before the thought got too out of control, Charles put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

"I appreciate the feeling, my friend, but it's not a fight I'm interested in today."

Erik looked at the collar, A grade. He'd seen mutants' scales fall off from wearing a fucking A grade collar, and Charles was still with it enough to catch a stray angry emotion. "Wearing those gloves all day must be like exercising with a weighted vest."

Charles shrugged, smiling. "They actually help me keep out background noise."

The ride up the elevator was quiet, Angel and Alex standing close and obviously leaving Erik and Charles to bicker. When the elevator opened, MacTaggart was standing at the doorway, arms crossed, looking unimpressed. Erik took a very long moment to try to remember if he had done anything recently that might have earned him that - besides spit in her ear - or if this was possibly for someone else, maybe Xavier.

"Doctor Xavier."

Doctor?

"Agent MacTaggart, so wonderful to see you again, you do know how much I love a good--" Charles' arm touched her hair and he jumped back, as though burned. "Raven Xavier, don't do that to me!"

Moira... _giggled_ and then started to melt and turn blue, finally landed in a completely different form, with entirely different bone structure and much brighter red hair and brilliant royal blue scales. "Sorry, Charles, too good an opportunity to pass up. What do you think?"

"It's good." Charles took her chin in his hand between two fingers and kissed her cheek, and then tapped her nose. "You must work on not breaking character, however." Arm still slung around the girl, Charles spun the two of them around. "Raven, may I introduce: Alex Summers, Angel Salvadore, and Erik Lehnsherr. This delightful young lady is Raven, my sister. We were a two for one deal over at the mutant-mart."

"Lunch?" Raven asked, slinging her arm around Charles' waist and pouting very deeply, leaving little doubt in his mind which Xavier was the older sibling.

"I have a case, Raven, go back to bothering Agent MacTaggart."

Raven pouted for another moment and then shifted, blue scales almost slithering and Erik watched more closely the second time, awed by the transition. He was less awed when he saw that she'd chosen him as the form to turn into. Charles' arm slid off her shoulder and Raven turned, almost _skipping_ away.

"Really, Raven." Charles grabbed her wrist, and it was like watching some bizarre movie and Charles had his hands on her shoulders - shoulders that looked exactly like his down to the suit he was wearing. Charles pulled her shoulders back slightly, let go, pressed his fingers into her back and straightened her posture just a touch. A nudge of his feet and her stance widened slightly. When she turned back to face Charles her whole body was... stiffer, and it made the mimicry much more disconcerting. "Ok, try again."

"Xavier, I want that report on my desk by lunch time!" Slightly rougher than Erik's voice, but close enough to be frighteningly accurate.

"Out," Charles laughed and pushed his sister away and she retreated, poise and posture so close to Erik's that he would have sworn he had a twin. "And Agent Lehnsherr, do make certain to keep your eyes on your identification badge or we will all..." He patted down his own pockets sighing. "On the bright side, it will likely be me that Moira is upset with in a half hour. Her me impression is truly exceptional."

Erik thought his head might explode from the momentary weirdness. It was very clear to him now that Charles and Raven had come as some sort of package deal. The agency was interested in empaths, but not as much as telepaths, a shapeshifter of that caliber, however... "You make her impressions better."

"Of course," Charles answered, following Erik to the desks in the middle of the cubical maze that belonged to Erik and his team. Angel and Alex took a few moments to shake off the strange image of Charles poking at their boss after he tried to skip away, but they were mutants, and they accepted a certain level of weirdness in their day. The two of them sat at their desks, Charles hopped up to sit on Erik's. "If I have the time - and I am not wearing this -" he tapped the collar- "then I can give her an incredible detailed psychological impression of her target."

"Me."

"No, _that_ was just profiling." He leaned in, voice low enough that Angel and Alex couldn't hear him. "You didn't read my personnel file, did you?"

"No." Because why lie to an empath.

"I really am quite talented. You'll be glad you kept me."

"I'm already sorry I did."

Charles finally left him alone, hopping off the desk and sliding into his own chair and doing... something that Erik wasn't going to worry about.

He logged into the computer, pulled up his internal mail and... what do you know Charles Francis Xavier's personnel file. Moira had even included a little ':-D' on the message that made him slightly irritated, but he didn't want to give her the pleasure.

Harvard - graduated at 19, _summa cum laude_ , biophysics and psychology dual degree. Oxford - graduated at 25 BMBCh and PhD, genetics and bioethics... and then... MCIS, and a four day orientation course in profiling - apparently Charles had even earned high distinctions in that. Erik blinked. This was not the file of a mutant who had been intending to go into the field. He was supposed to be behind a desk, a very squishy desk where he analyzed things and sent bruisers like Erik or Scott or Angel off to catch bad guys.

Erik looked to where Charles was sitting, desk across from him, looking at his own computer screen, eyes flicking over it, reading something. Charles stopped leaned on his elbow looking towards Erik. "Your brain is very loud." He said it at a stage whisper.

Angel and Alex sniggered.

"What do you have, Xavier?" Charles arched an eyebrow. "Charles."

"Michael Summers' bank balance, $24.13, last pay stub deposited five weeks ago, sporadic ATM withdrawals ever since, does not use his ATM card at stores, pays cash. No deposits since the last pay stub." Charles poked the television by his head, bringing up Summers' registration profile.

Erik frowned at it. "If he's considered dangerous shouldn't he have been able to get his medication for free?"

"He's _not_ considered dangerous, actually," Charles answered, immediately. "He takes the suppressants voluntarily, no state funds."

Why would anyone...?

Charles blew up the photo on Summers' registration, left it there and then looked at Erik, waiting for him to say something. Erik looked. The kid had looked... normal, pink and humany. He made the connection a moment later. "Suppressants normalized his appearance." Of course. "He got into money trouble, stopped taking them... and..."

Across from him, Charles shrugged.

"Shit." Alex was the one to break the silence. "I mean... when I was in high school..." Alex shrugged looking awkward. Erik knew at least part of the story, he'd been rated as involuntary suppressant material while he was exposed to humans. "Your... whatever you do can go all to hell after you've been out for so long, no control."

"No control, huh?" Erik turned to Charles and without him asking Charles had already pulled up the power registration again.

Thick carapace covering of most of the skin, extreme agility, lightning reflexes, strength in excess of human baseline averages.

"Angel, the crime scene photos if you would?" Charles took her camera from her, started to load them onto the office machine, pulling up a few that Erik had missed being taken that showed the victim's stomach, shirt slightly pulled up to examine the waistband. "There."

Charles tapped the TV screen. Erik didn't see anything.

"I will admit the picture quality is not superb, no fault of Angel, of course, it's a matter of pixels. His carapace was cracked. If he was just coming down off of suppressants it would have been incredibly hard to damage him, as it stood most of the rounds barely punctured chest and ribs."

"They were high velocity rounds, actually," Erik added, which he had thought was strange at the time. "Point blank."

"He got the _shit_ beaten out of him."

"Yes, thank you for that, Summers."

Erik had the feeling that Mr. Michael Summers had gotten into something much more dangerous than a little bit of loan sharking, as Charles had first suggested. At the back of his mind was the knowledge that if a high velocity handgun round fired point blank could barely puncture, then the person - or persons - who had done the 'shit kicking' were also very likely to be mutants.

He could tell the thought hadn't crossed Alex or Angel's minds yet, but Charles was looking at him with a hint of worry in his expression that made him think he was having the exact same thoughts.

As much as Erik truly, completely, and viciously loathed some _human_ killing a mutant, a mutant killing another mutant made him...

He stopped the internal spiral that was going on in his mind, if only to keep Charles from rubbing his forehead as though he was working on a migraine. Erik already knew he was going to hate this case.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the wonderful comments and kudos!


	3. Chapter 3

Erik tapped his fingers lightly against his desk. Mutants, possibly. Probably. He didn't like it. Did. Not. Like it. A rolled up ball of paper hit his side, looking up he saw Charles not even trying to hide the fact that he had flicked it. Charles' fingertips were pressed to his forehead, in what Erik was starting to think of as his 'Lehnsherr, you think too loudly' pose.

"We'll have to wait for the au-tops..." He looked at Charles.

"I'm not a trained pathologist."

"I thought you weren't a mind reader either."

"You said 'autopsy' and then looked at me. It was either that or you plotting my convenient and completely accidental appearing demise for reasons as-of-yet unclear."

"I read your personnel file."

"Gathered that as well from the aforementioned 'autopsy' discussion."

Alex was now squinting from his desk, looking at Charles suspiciously. "Is there something in Xavier's file that says he should be good with dead bodies."

"Yes, it's under 'extracurricular interests: necrophilia'," Charles snarked at Alex. Alex made a face - one that said he had no idea what necrophilia was, rather than the one Erik thought Charles might have been hoping for. "Nevermind, I'm a doctor, Alex, a medical doctor. Although, as Erik well knows I have _not_ had a residency or fellowship, I am well enough trained to make an assessment of the injuries after the clothing has been bagged."

Angel was snickering at both of them, but she stood. "Come on, Doc, I'll show you to the morgue."

"I really do prefer 'Charles', Angel."

The two of them headed back to the elevator, Erik sliding into Charles' chair and looking through the information the other man had pulled on their victim.

"Alex?"

"Going to see what Hank found in the lab, on it."

Erik almost grinned. Who needed telepaths when you had minions who knew exactly what you were going to say before you said it?

His mood was dampened by the fact that he still had no idea how bad this murder might have been. He'd pulled over a dozen slugs out of Summers and he didn't need a profiler to tell him that was a vicious crime. No shots to the face, though, or the hands - no obvious defensive wounds; Summers had probably been surprised by his attacker. No forced entry; attacker was known to the victim.

After a few more moments of considering the details he saw the tablet Charles had been using during the crime scene walkthrough. He pulled that onto his lap and started browsing through the notes. He found Charles' interview assessments with their markings and notes that Charles seemed to find helpful - thankfully the couple upstairs had stopped having sex somewhere in the middle of the second interview and there were much fewer notes for 'sex lots of sex' after that.

Other than Mitchell, the subjects had been mostly truthful, they were all skittish about the time of the murder, but as Charles had said at the time that could have been anything distrust of mutants, guilt, fear of what had happened, and didn't necessarily indicate anything untoward.

Another note contained a hand-written note that seemed to be the beginnings of a victim profile.

 _Victim was social, had many friends, and an active social calendar. Frequent clubbing, infrequent drinker, frequent protected sex. [multi? jealous lover?]. Believed in integration through power suppression [self-loathing? - does not fit with social life, pos.]. Likely had mostly human friends, probably did not enjoy the company of non-human passing mutants. Earned decent living, spends money on ?? [chk $$s]_

"Well that seems a little hypocritical, don't you think?" Charles. Erik looked up to find the empath looming over him. Really the only way Charles could effectively loom was when Erik was sitting, but there was a definite 'loom' to his pose.

"How do you figure?" Although he knew exactly what Charles was talking about.

Charles arched an eyebrow - his 'seriously, Lehnsherr?' face, actually. "You don't like people in your head and yet, here you are, reading my notes." He hopped up on the desk again, leaning back just slightly to also look at his computer screen. Erik still had Summers' profile up on the screen. Charles sighed.

"I figured you'd want to share eventually." They were a team. The only reason Erik could see not wanting to share would be because further information came to light that made the lead less hot.

"I don't mind," he answered immediately. "Still, would have been nice to ask."

Erik hadn't gotten a chance to finish with the notes, but he had to admit that Charles had sketched out more than a few potential leads. He _was_ impressed. Even if none of them came to fruition it was good to know that Charles had an investigative mind, even if he hadn't...

"I'll ask next time." Charles nodded, head tilting up looking at the ceiling. "Charles?"

"Mmm?"

Erik looked around, Alex and Angel both nowhere in sight. "Why are you here? MCIS field agent obviously isn't where you thought you would be a few years ago. Your training is for desk work - really your training is for running a damn lab or something, full of geniuses."

"Oh-" A weird guilty-stunned-abashed look that didn't seem to fit Charles' flashed across his face. 'Yaknow... I guess I just... ah..."

Erik looked Charles over again, really looked. A suspicion started to form in the back of his mind. He patted Charles' jacket pockets. No gloves. "Raven."

"Damn." She shimmered, leaving the blue girl from before perched on his desk. She pulled out her phone and pressed it. "You're good, Lehnsherr. Two minutes, forty-one seconds. Hard to believe you only met my brother this morning. I forgot his gloves, didn't I?" She sighed. Charles' sigh, actually.

Erik put out his hand. "His ID badge, please."

She stuck her tongue out at him, but she did hand over the badge. "What were you going to say if I was Charles and you had totally just patted me down for no good reason?"

He... honestly didn't know, but it was obvious that Raven had the same strange sense of humor that her brother did so... he shrugged. "That we had obviously progressed to second date territory by now."

Raven laughed. "You called him a fucking empath, didn't you?"

"I did." Apparently that was a well worn joke, with both of them. "So, whose team are you on, Xavier?"

"Raven, and I'm not on a team - I'm ... for emergency use only. They've got me training on _everything_ now." 'Everything' was obviously quite burdensome. "Even though Charles already trained me for hand to hand and stealth and climbing and mimicry and accents and all of that. So, it's boring."

Erik made a mental note to get Charles in the gym, stat, at least to see if he was any good at the things he'd trained his sister in. "So you're going around trying to see how long you can convince people that you're your brother?"

"It's a game. Charles and I have been playing it since we were kids." Raven looked over her shoulder, off to the side. " You should apologize, though. Charles won't mind... because he's Charles, but that doesn't mean you should just take advantage."

Before he could answer she had slid off and away. Charles and Angel had returned from the morgue. He held up Charles card for him, and the empath took it. "How long did you last?"

"Two minutes, forty-one seconds."

Charles nodded, impressed, before sobering. "I'm glad I got the chance to see the body before the autopsy. There is definitely some bruising and even scarring farther up that I couldn't see due to clothing and blood." He tapped his finger against the desk. "It seems likely that Mr. Summers was beaten, possibly on more than one occasion, by someone who possessed strength that I could only categorize as 'outside of human tolerances'."

"A mutant." Erik didn't need the confirmation, but he needed to say it.

Charles nodded. "It seems likely. Highly likely."

"Alright. Angel, Alex, I want the two of you to do interviews with..." He looked over at Charles, realizing that if anyone should be at the interviews it was Charles, but at the same time he didn't delight in the idea of leaving Alex or Angel with Charles. Alex was clearly uncomfortable with him, Angel had fewer issues with him, but Charles seemed to have slipped into a position of authority before Erik had noticed. "Charles and I will interview the friends, you two go to his old job, try to figure out why he left or was fired, and why his registration wasn't updated."

Angel nodded, taking the lead. Charles slid up onto his desk and took the tablet that Erik had been reading. "I made a prioritized list based on cell phone and chat records to estimate familiarity with Summers. Also bagged a sample of Summers' shell for Hank."

One thing Erik did like about Charles - the man understood how he thought, or at least had a solid appreciation for what went into detective work other than casual pronouncements of 'he's lying'. "Alright, Charles. Let's go. And... sorry about reading your notes."

"Raven pester you about it?" Charles' voice was light, easy. Raven had said he wouldn't mind...

Erik smiled, rueful, and shrugged.

"That's fine. I wasn't hiding anything. I really don't see the point." Charles slid off of the desk and Erik had to jog to catch up to him.

"Don't see the point in... having privacy?" Erik thought that was probably the most disturbing thing he'd heard form Charles yet, he knew empaths and telepaths could run roughshod over a mind, but...

"I don't see any point in pretending I will have any."

Erik winced. Who was he kidding? Empaths had some of the tightest restrictions of any mutant. As much as he hated Emma, hated dealing with her and her annual psych reviews, he could at least be - relatively - certain she would stay out of places she wasn't supposed to go. Empaths and telepaths were some weird house of cards where they all watched each other. Creepy. "I'm sorry."

That earned him a smile, and he had a feeling that Charles could tell he actually meant it this time. "Consider my notes your notes, Erik."

"Who are we going to interview first?"

Erik, in general, hated interviews, especially ones with weepy humans, but Charles somehow made the whole thing bearable. Charles was clearly a natural at navigating interviews, with and without gloves, with and without using his powers; he was... effortless with people, naturally flirty and humorous in a way that people didn't find off-putting, comforting and sympathetic when the situation called for it, and earnestly empathic. In short, he was everything that Erik was not when it came to people.

"I need a break," Charles announced as he slid into the car after their fifth interview. Erik couldn't blame him, _he_ was exhausted after the last interview, that had involved a significant amount of crying and Michael Summers' girlfriend (Christina) clinging to Charles like a drowned rat.

Charles put the seat down, looking like he was about to take a nap, and handed his tablet over to Erik.

"We should get a late lunch." Charles' stomach growled in agreement. "And then we can compare notes. Pizza? Oh, right, you're just back from England, fish and chips?"

"If I never eat something that resembles pub food again, it will be too soon," Charles answered, eyes still closed. "You do know how graduate students eat, right?"

Erik drove them a few blocks to a deli he knew in the area, parked, and spared a glance at Charles, who was still looking just a little wrecked. Charles' breathing was slightly ragged, and the man was breathing through his nose to try to calm himself, his mouth was tight, and he was radiating tension. "Are you alright to go in?"

Charles looked over at the deli. "I should be fine." He opened the door and got out, stretched. The man was interesting, Erik decided. He seemed to mold himself depending on the circumstance, even now rolling down his sleeves to make the gloves he wore less conspicuous, make himself look more human.

They ended up set up in a tucked away corner of the deli, enough that Erik had a good view of everyone and a strong fix on the metal in the room.

"So," Charles said, finally massaging his temple slightly but otherwise seeming perfectly normal. "Although Moira did brief me... I like to understand the people I work with."

"You can read my file." Because that was going to be the end of that, he didn't want Charles poking around in his head and talking about _feelings_.

"I have," Charles answered, not even repentant about it. "Empaths have to have a certain understanding of the people they work with. I am certain there is a great deal more to you than what can be found in a file."

Erik watched Charles, wary. This was usually the point in the conversation where the empath tried to headshrink him and pick apart all of the little biographical details that were so lovingly transcribed into black and white formality. He wondered what assumptions Charles had made, what profile he'd constructed in his head on one Erik Lehnsherr.

"What do you do for fun, Erik?"

He narrowed his eyes, suspicious of the question. The reuben sandwich he'd ordered for lunch proved a momentary distraction, but after that he wasn't going to be able to avoid the question for much longer.

"I run, lift weights..." Charles nodded, pleasantly. "Play chess... and metalworking - art."

Charles took a long sip of his tea. "I'm very much the same, minus the metal working, but I add in some medical journals and scientific journals here and there." Erik raised an eyebrow in response, dubious. "Yes?"

"Running and lifting weights?" Because Charles certainly didn't look it.

Erik didn't even care if Charles sensed his skepticism. As far as he was concerned, a medical doctor and an academic, especially one hadn't built a career around law enforcement, was unlikely to keep himself in the best of shape.

"Running, certainly, weights less so. I was a track all-star in high school, and although I didn't compete in college I did spend a great deal of time jogging in between thesis work; the mind and the body are a cohesive unit." Erik could see a smile fighting at the corners of Charles' lips. "It is true my sister is the far more physically minded of us, but I am not entirely unprepared for the rigors of field work, Erik."

The skepticism he had towards Charles and his ability to handle himself in a fight was not going to dissipate on Charles' say-so, however. "Your sister... I haven't read her file, but you two don't seem much alike."

"We have the same sense of humor," Charles answered easily. "We both enjoy peanut butter, banana, and honey sandwiches... But I can tell that is not what you are referring to. Raven and I are not biologically related, she is adopted, which is a far more rational explanation than a pair of humans having two children with such wildly divergent mutations."

"First generation?" Charles nodded. "Me too. And Raven?"

"Probably first gen, she was abandoned as a baby." Charles poked at his sandwich, finally taking a rather large bite - despite his protest about pub food he was eating a fried egg and cheese sandwich, which Erik found deeply amusing. "And I do not mean they left her on the stoop of a church or an adoption agency."

Erik's jaw tensed. He hated to think of a mutant doing that to their own child. The thought made him frown, and the frown made his thoughts tumble together in a way that was uncomfortable and dark. A few moments later, Charles pressed his fingers to the back of Erik's hand, pressing something comforting into the back of his mind. Erik almost fought it, but then realized there was no reason, again it was easy to identify the emotion as coming from Charles and he thought about what the man had said earlier.

"You said that you could put emotions in that I wouldn't recognize as yours."

"Yes, I can also leave... fingerprints if you will, or I can metaphorically wear gloves. It is the best way I can offer to ensure that you have no reason to distrust me - and it may be important for me to send an emotional concept to you that you recognize as my own." Charles gave him a toothy grin. "It's not quite as handy as telepathy, but it can manage. I can have something quite like a conversation with Raven, actually, I understand her emotional landscape, and she mine."

"I feel as though you need an instruction manual, Xavier."

"The care and feeding of Charles Xavier. Raven has notes. They're very handy. 'Feed Charles earl grey tea when he can't stop crinkling his forehead', 'Glower if he uses the word groovy more than once in five minutes', et cetera."

The two really did have the same, weird, sense of humor. "This I have to read."

"Perhaps if you ask nicely, she is very loyal, though." Charles continued to look incredibly amused, filled with a sort of humor that should have been at odds with Erik's own wry sarcasm, but it fit well. "Dark chocolate coated bananas."

"For you?"

"For Raven." Why was Charles telling him that? Charles shrugged. "I don't mind you knowing, and Raven would appreciate me scoring her chocolate bananas."

Charles was just... "Why do you give so much away?" Erik guarded his secrets like scraps of precious metal and Charles seemed content to lounge across from him in his chair, an open book for Erik to rifle through.

"It only seems fair, doesn't it?"

Erik didn't think it seemed fair at all, and yet he couldn't resist the lure of picking up the bits of information as Charles casually left them strewn over the table between them.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the lovely comments and kudos everyone! I hope to be finished with this tangled mess next week, but we've reached the halfway mark and things are heating up. Enjoy.

Despite eating, Erik realized that Charles was run down - possibly because of the way his forehead kept involuntarily scrunching and crinkling between his eyes. The empath had conducted ten interviews, several of them with grief stricken friends, and Erik had to admit he probably hadn't been the most soothing presence during the interviews at Michael Summers' apartment either.

"I think we should call it a day," Erik said, and Charles nodded. "Back to the office."

Erik didn't miss the slight furrow that immediately appeared in Charles' brow.

"Maybe after a few months... MacTaggart could get you a waiver for the collar." The idea made him just a touch uncomfortable, but he knew that it couldn't be comfortable. Powers, their mutations, it was part of who they were.

"No." He did peel off the gloves though, pocketing them while his eyes remained closed. "I do appreciate the sentiment, Erik, but it is not necessary. It is uncomfortable, but I do enjoy the opportunity to not be stared at and treated like something dangerous, if only for a few hours."

They were dangerous, though, both of them. Maybe Charles was afraid of what he could do. "I want to assess your hand to hand, as well, and see how much work you'll need for a gun cert. I don't care if you're an empath, you need to know how to use a gun."

"You do know that if I shot someone it would be nearly as good as shooting myself, right?"

Erik knew that, but Charles still needed to be certified. He didn't answer, though, because he wasn't interested in starting that conversation. The ride back to the office was near-silent, with Charles in some sort of deep nap-meditation that Erik was reluctant to disturb and Erik turning over the interviews in his head, trying not to let his thoughts interfere with his partner's nap.

The trip through security and up to the bullpen was also done in silence and Charles set down his tablet at his appropriated desk. Angel was at her desk, prodding something on the computer.

"Alex?" Erik asked.

"Down in the lab with Hank. Victim was fired - seemed..." She wiggled her fingers in a way that Erik interpreted to mean 'fishy'. "Apparently the cat had been late a few times recently, but when I asked for write ups there weren't any. You might want Mr. Wizard to follow up." She indicated Charles.

"You aren't old enough to have actually watched that show," Charles answered, rather than correct the name.

"I watched it on the Science Channel."

"I suddenly feel very old." Erik was sure that Angel hadn't heard Charles' mumble, but it made him snort. He continued, more loudly. "Regardless, I'm certain your impressions are correct. There are many interesting coincidences following our victim around."

"Nothing that can't wait until tomorrow." Erik wanted the murder solved as much as anyone, but he'd been up since (almost) six himself, the rest of the team had been up longer, and they had no hot leads. "Have you finished up the paperwork on the break-ins?"

Angel shook her head and Erik made a 'do that' hand gesture that doubled as something vaguely dismissive. Angel nodded and pulled up the report. "Where are you going?" She asked to Erik and Charles' retreating backs.

"Gym."

"Oh, I have got to see this."

Erik glowered at her, but apparently not even the force of his - very impressive - glare was able to shake her determination to spectate, and Angel was heading after them, practically floating. Before they reached the elevator, a blonde girl came up behind Charles, seemingly without him noticing, but just before she reached he bent down enough so she could slide easily into a piggyback position, arms slung around his neck and legs tucked into his arms.

"Home?"

"The gym, Raven."

"Can I come watch you get the pulp beaten out of you?"

"Your faith in my unarmed combat skills is heart-warming. Off you go." He dropped her with almost no warning, but she landed easily, sidestepped, and then slung her arm over his shoulder, leaning up to kiss his cheek. They really were sickening. Charles snorted, and Erik realized Charles had probably heard, or at least gotten an impression of his thoughts.

"You've been doing interviews, haven't you." Her fingers were up on his temples now, rubbing little circles. Charles didn't answer.

"The care and feeding of Charles Xavier?" Erik asked. He was _not_ going to rub Charles' temples.

Raven stuck her tongue out at him. "Leave that to me, you'll just break him and I'll have to make him drink tea all evening."

Erik was very certain that was some sort of insubordination, probably one he should have argued with, but Charles was apparently amused by the whole interplay, and his shoulders and the lines of his mouth did look far more relaxed now. Charles would have to be fresh, regardless, if it ever came to a fight, but he was glad the empath wouldn't be starting completely worn down.

"I'm not going to _break_ your brother."

Raven flawlessly communicated 'yeah, yeah' with a dismissive wave of her hand as the four of them climbed on the elevator.

"Sure she's not the older sister?" Erik asked, when the two of them slipped into the men's locker room and away from Angel and Raven. "She's very protective."

"Raven has her moments," Charles answered, pulling up to a locker and thumbing the lock on it before he started to strip out of his suit. "She just knows I'm not at my best after a day of other people's grief."

Erik tried to think of something to say, but he was nearly useless when it came to saying something sympathetic, so instead he ended up staring off into space for a few moments before getting to his locker - about a half row down from Charles - and changing into his own sweats. After he'd changed, he waited for Charles. Seeing the empath in a t-shirt (emblazoned with MCIS across the chest) and sweatpants made him look even younger than he had before, and Erik suddenly had a good idea why Charles seemed to enjoy dressing like a grandfather.

"Yes, yes, I look like a kid," Charles groused, fingers messing through his hair for a moment and then he set about stretching his arms as they headed out to the gym.

Erik didn't have the heart to tease him further, especially when apparently Angel had called Alex in the meantime and the mutant had dragged up Hank from the lab to witness his and Charles session. Moira stood watching from the entrance, face impassive, behind her the icy-cold stare of one Emma Frost.

"We seem to have become something of a main attraction, Charles."

The man shrugged, deeply engrossed in stretching his legs now. "What do you want to start with?"

"A few grabs and blocks. I'll need to know how well you can defend yourself."

"Alright. No powers?"

That made him frown. "What would you even do?" Charles smiled, sly and a little dangerous, and Erik wondered what he would get himself into if he said yes. "Sure. I might as well know what you've got."

He reached forward, hands going for Charles' throat, and the metal collar there, but before his hands could reach, Charles' fist flew out, hit him in the chest and made him stop. The smaller man pressed forward, legs tangled up with Erik's and the next thing he knew he was on his back. Charles was on top of him in a split second, arms trapping one of Erik's, half-way through rolling him onto his stomach before he realized what was happening.

Instinct finally took over, replacing shock, and he got his leg in front of Charles' chest, pushed him off and sending him sprawling. Charles had a coiled leg between them when Erik tried to attack, pushing him far enough away that Charles could roll back up to his feet.

"Surprised?" Charles was... surprisingly cheeky, but not cocky. He knew Erik had underestimated him.

"Very," he admitted. "Try to take me down, everything you've got."

Charles backed up a few paces, hands and guard still up, shaking his hand in a way that Erik thought might mean his wrist was in pain.

"Don't let him have time to think, Erik!" Raven shouted from the sidelines.

"Traitor!" Charles shouted back.

Erik lunged forward, fist aimed for Charles' solar plexus. Charles grabbed his wrist, barely a touch as he sidestepped, nothing he could use for leverage-- but then Erik's chest _hurt_ , deep and throbbing and aching, but Charles was only touching his wrist. He recognized the 'fingerprints' of the feeling a breath later, Charles. He tried to shake it off, tell himself it wasn't real, but the empath's fist hit him hard in the side and he staggered.

He pushed through the injury, barely, pushed through the pain and the knot of raw, painful emotion that was coiled in his chest, slowly fading now that Charles wasn't touching him. Dimly he realized that Charles was wearing a fucking Grade A dampening collar, and he'd still managed to do that. Charles was circling him now, eyes tense but face relaxed, shaking his hand again.

Erik had to attack, now, before Charles got his bearings again, and Erik aimed for Charles' chest again, watched for the side step, and then his left connected with Charles' jaw, sending the man to the ground. Charles lashed out with a kick, not coordinated but enough to hit Erik's ankle and then Charles scrambled, his bare skin grabbing Erik's ankle - pain again - and tugged. He was on his back, Charles on top of him, the weight of his hand leaving on Erik's throat leaving him feeling helpless even as he knew he could fight Charles.

Charles had to break his grasp to roll him, and Erik barely managed to push through the terror, used Charles' momentum against him, pressing the empath's face into the mat, shoulder on his back making it impossible for him to move or touch Erik. After a few moments, Charles stopped struggling and tapped out.

Erik was still struggling with the lingering terror Charles had put into his mind, didn't let him go until he felt like himself again.

"Shit," Erik panted, low enough for only Charles to hear, "Never want to fight you without that collar."

"No one does."

The rest of the room was silent - Alex and Angel's silence was likely some mix of stunned awe that there had ever been any doubt as to who would win. Neither of the two younger mutants had ever managed to more than scratch Erik in hand to hand. Raven was silently grinning - some mix of revenge or teasing or something directed towards Charles. Hank's face was pure shock, mouth gaping. Moira and Emma he couldn't read, the telepath's long, graceful neck also showed a collar, enough to leave her powers dampened. She walked over to Charles looked him in the eyes and he watched something that almost resembled two dogs circling each other before a fight.

"Very impressive, Xavier."

"Glad you approve, Frost."

There was a strange... fission, almost, between the two of them, wills clashing in a way that felt light lightning down the back of Erik's neck. He found himself wondering if the two were going to fight or if the pair of them were just going to fuck on the gym mats.

Emma's lip curled and she tilted her head towards Erik. Shit. Why did he think so loudly? Charles arched an eyebrow at her and then laughed a moment later. The tension broke, Charles backed away.

"Are we done for the day, my friend, or are you going to make me murder little paper targets?"

"Come on." Charles followed after him when he turned for the locker room.

Erik was trying not to let his frustration bubble up to the surface too obviously. Emma was irritating on the best of days, but Erik found himself even more annoyed she seemed to be... messing with his empath. His emotions weren't much under control by the time they were back inside the locker room and he was surprised to find Charles' hand on his shoulder.

"Did I upset you?" Charles looked very concerned. "You did say to use my powers--"

"No, it's Emma." Charles looked up at him, confused. "I didn't like her messing with you."

"Oh. Goes with the territory, I'm afraid. Emma..." Charles was blushing now, an actual blush, pink across his cheeks, looking like a ridiculous teenager. "She's not particularly adept with reading and implanting emotions and was curious. As to the rest..." Charles somehow was blushing even more furiously. "Unless she was putting words into your head... well..." Charles put his face in his hands, scrubbing.

Erik had no idea what Charles was trying to say.

"Regardless, I'm more than capable of defending myself from any unwanted advances from Emma."

Erik made a face that very firmly indicated he did _not_ want Charles to finish that thought. "Stop, Charles, just stop."

"No need to concern yourself with my virtue." He was smiling now, obviously enjoying the joke.

Never, ever, wanted to have heard Charles finish that thought. "I think we'll pass on the shooting paper targets."

"Oh, good. I was getting more than a little tired." Charles did look completely exhausted, and he felt guilty for pushing the man. Still, it was impressive to know he could manage that much of a defense even after a full day of using his powers.

"I've never been that scared," he admitted, back to Charles as he went up to a sink, stripped off his shirt and scrubbed off the worst of the sweat from their brief workout.

"You certainly have," Charles answered, taking a cue from Erik and washing up a bit as well. "You don't remember it, though, you were probably a child, or you've not thought about it recently. I can't give you something you have no capacity for. I can't make you feel... purple. Although that would be quite a trick."

Erik thought about it for a moment, thought about the emotion there, fear, pure, simple, terror. "Purple?"

"Raven I can make feel purple."

"She's blue, not purple."

Charles laughed, scrubbing water through his hair. "Not like that. Raven doesn't like grape juice, and I can... send her that feeling, the taste of drinking grape juice, and then from there she can make some guesses. It's hardly exact."

"Emotional charades." The idea was ... fascinating and impractical.

"Exactly. We played when we were kids, stretching the limits of what I could do. You lift weights, I... play emotional charades." Erik looked over at Charles, dubious. "There's a reason I can put fear into you so strong you can barely move even with this collar on, my friend."

Psychic muscles. Erik found the idea amusing. Charles himself... well Erik had to admit he was surprised that under the Oxfordly exterior, Charles was fit. He could throw a punch, and take a hit, and even though he obviously didn't spend as much time in the gym as Erik did he wasn't soft.

"And if you weren't wearing that?"

"I wouldn't need to touch you."

Shit.

Charles shrugged back into his shirt, and his slacks, leaving the rest of his clothes off. "You can trust me not to hurt you, Erik. No matter what else you might believe of me, I hope you will believe that."

Not today, unfortunately. Maybe not ever.

Charles didn't answer the thoughts and emotions that were buzzing around in Erik's head, and Erik didn't put any of them into words to voice. Erik knew it was something that was going to stretch between them for some time, and he thought Charles probably understood that as well.

"Pizza tonight?" Raven asked, slipping her arm through his when her brother walked out of the locker room a few paces in front of Erik.

"Mmm, that sounds delightful. Call Sean, get it sorted."

The siblings wound their way back to Charles' desk, picked up their things and headed downstairs. Erik thought about lingering and avoiding the moment of Xavier family bonding, but eventually followed them onto the elevator to the garage. At the exit, Charles stood - patiently - waiting to have the collar pulled off.

"Would you like to come over for pizza?" Raven asked, her brother standing a few feet away.

He'd been craving pizza most of the day, actually. He blamed it on the fact they'd done an interview in a pizza shop earlier. Still, Erik shook his head. "No, I think I'll just--"

All hell broke loose in only a moment, he felt a spike of something like fear - Charles, maybe - a smell something acrid and smoky - and then he saw a mutant, red and devilish, appear out of thin air, wrap his arms around Charles and then ... nothing. He disappeared, taking Charles with him.

One of the guards slammed his hand onto a button and the alarm was up, blaring loud, putting Erik's teeth on edge. Erik's gun was out, everything metal in the room on the tip of his mind, ready to strike. Raven slid seamlessly into her blue form.

Nothing.

Time passed, Erik looked around, listening trying to hear anything that might be coming. Still...

Nothing.


	5. Chapter 5

"Charles?" Raven took a deep breath, looked around. Her usual humor and calm were slowly evaporating and Erik actually found himself wanting to comfort her. Instead, his eyes swept over the lobby and garage, over everything, looking for where a second strike might come from. "Come on, Charles..."

Emma and Moira were down in the lobby only a few moments later. "What happened?" MacTaggart snapped, glancing between Erik and Emma.

"It seems someone had something of an undue interest in our new empath," Emma answered smoothly. Erik wondered whose mind she'd plucked that from. "You can holster your weapon, Lehnsherr, there's no one around."

"Teleporter," Erik told Moira, holstering his gun. "Came into the foyer, it was over in a snap."

"This building is _supposed_ to be secured against people popping in and out like that whenever they feel!" Anger and frustration was coming off of Moira in waves that Erik didn't need to be telepathic to feel.

Raven came up to stand beside Erik, her blue face covered in tears, hand over her mouth. "He was still in his collar, too, powers suppressed."

Erik caught a flick of something cross Emma's icy face, nothing he could decipher, but it was a surprise to see any emotion there at all. "Frost?"

"I might be able to locate him, but I've only been in his mind once, and..." She shook her head. "I'll try."

"Raven," Erik asked, the girl's eyes were shiny with tears. "Does Charles have any enemies? Anyone who would want to hurt him?"

"Have you met my brother?" At least she could still manage sarcasm. "No. No, he's ... boring."

"Case related?" Moira suggested.

Erik shrugged. "We've only done a few interviews, nothing interesting, neighbors, a few friends, a girlfriend of the victim." There really wasn't anything there that should have been dangerous. "We should at least look over Charles' notes."

All of them headed back upstairs with renewed urgency, Angel and Alex were both suited up, guns strapped to their thighs and waiting for the word from Erik if they were moving out.

"Boss?" Alex asked.

"Charles was just kidnapped. I need you both on your game, now."

Alex slid back into his desk chair, pulling up the case file they had been working on. "I'll have Doc's file in a few minutes."

Erik took a deep breath, relieved he had Alex there. The kid could be hot headed - like Erik, if he was being honest with himself - but he was more than capable of thinking on his feet. He was currently battling some of his own hotheadedness that moment; he was _frustrated_ he didn't want to go back up to his office and look through notes, he wanted to rip through the city until he found that little fluffy... teleporting asshole and ripped him limb from limb for stealing someone from _his_ team.

"Did anyone get a good look at the kidnapper?" Moira asked the room at large.

"He was red," Erik said. "A little furry?"

Raven sighed and shifted into a near-perfect replica of the kidnapper, hair, eyes, everything about him was disconcertingly real. Everyone stared. "Take a picture, it'll last longer."

Angel looked the mock-mutant up and down, awe plain on her face, and then did exactly that.

"Get that into the database," Erik growled at her. He felt bad a moment later, but the look on Angel's face said she wasn't going to hold it against him.

Raven shifted back into her blue form, staring at the database and reading carefully off of the victim's file. A moment later Charles' came up on screen as well, but she didn't spend much time on it.

"Raven, you should go home," Erik said, coming up to stand beside her, eyes skittering over Charles' registration profile, not really taking it in. She turned to him - glare so icy he would have sworn he was looking at Emma. "You're personally involved and..."

The blue mutant shook her head again. "No. I'm staying here, for as long as it takes."

The insistence frustrated Erik, but he couldn't bring himself to force her out. She and Charles both were new agents, new to this sort of thing. Erik had seen the occasional mutant kidnapping before, and was used to it, but for Raven this was all new, and it was her brother. He turned to Angel, pushing himself to ignore the fact that it was one of _his_ mutants who had suddenly become their victim.

"Angel, what do we know about Xavier?" Xavier, not Charles, not their teammate. If he was going to try to shoo Raven home for personal involvement he would need to play this by the book.

"Um..." The girl paused for a moment.

"I'll handle this briefing, Lehnsherr," Emma said, sliding up carefully next to the computer screen containing the personnel and registration files. "I have been in his head, after all. In short, Xavier is clean, educational background cleared, relationships with foreign nationals minimal and cleared, financials clean, job, obviously clean."

The telepath paused, Erik tried to think of where to go next. "Personal life?" Emma hadn't mentioned. He felt... guilty for prying, but it was possible it was relevant to the case. Raven blushed slightly purple and then hid her face in the notes her brother had been taking for the case.

"A little more colorful, nothing compromising. Son, David, three years old. He's the sole guardian."

Erik frowned at the revelation, well, it was barely a revelation, it wasn't as though they had exchanged life histories. Still... Xavier was a kid himself, barely out of college. Erik tried to wrap his mind around the information. "Child's mother?"

"Deceased. No family."

"Relationships?" Erik let his eyes drift over the information on screen.

"No. Not at the moment," Raven answered, still flipping through notes, using her fingers to ghost over the data and take it all in. Erik should have cared - should have told her those were need to know - but... why bother?

"Could he know something?" Erik asked, not sure what he was asking. "Something about us here? About MCIS? Why would you want an empath, when... well when you can have a telepath?"

The computer beeped behind him, Erik turned to Alex. Alex's clipped report came a moment later: "No local match on our mystery teleporter. Checking other databases."

"Well..." Moira had been observing, silently, for some time, she looked over to Emma, whose lips were pursed tight. "For _some_ things, an empath is better than a telepath, actually."

"Like?" The information was news to Erik.

"Interrogating telepathic-resistant individuals, for one, and other telepaths," Emma answered. "Anyone who's been trained in methods to keep them from thinking about something will still often have underlying _emotional_ responses that fly over the head of someone listening to surface thoughts or even deeper thoughts. Xavier is a 10+, if he's paying attention he's a near-perfect polygraph." Emma seemed to be considering saying more, but added nothing else.

"Charles wouldn't just read people, though, he's not like that," Raven said, hands still gripping her brother's tablet like a lifeline. "I mean, leaving aside all the rules there are anyway, he's got his own rules."

"Rules don't mean much when you're bleeding out or have fingers broken," Erik said, hard. He regretted it instantly, Raven's royal blue scales took on a pale, sick color. "And how can he be a near-perfect polygraph? His notes read like a ten year old girl."

Raven giggled, actually giggled, and Erik was glad to see she'd managed to keep his previous comment from bothering her too much. "You're reading them wrong. On second thought, more likely he was pulling your leg. Here."

She set the pad down and Erik saw the same - or similar - notes as Charles had shown him from the morning's interviews. There were all the same brief comments, with little more of interest.

"Show me which questions Charles asked. Actually... did he take the lead on any of these?"

"Rayne, Brandon Rayne, our... third interview."

Raven pulled it up, looking over it. "Pizza! Charles you idiot."

"What?"

"I've been craving pizza all afternoon!" Erik opened his mouth, about to remind Raven that her brother had been _kidnapped_ by mutant unknown, they already had one dead mutant - killed by mutants - and she was worrying about _pizza_. "This is the interview that was bothering Charles. He works in a pizza shop. Working it over in his head, thinking about pizza..."

"I had wondered why he was so hung up on pizza," Emma said. "So, what is so exceptional about Mr. Rayne?"

Erik realized he had been thinking about pizza, too. Charles' mind worked in mysterious ways.

Raven pulled up the interview, looking over it, scanning it easily. "Oh. Well apparently they're a front, for... yaknow, various criminal activity."

Erik looked over Raven's shoulder, and saw absolutely nothing that would indicate that. Raven tapped a few of the marks Charles had made.

"Why didn't your brother think to mention this?" He and Xavier were going to have to work on some _trust issues._

"Because!" Raven huffed. "It's all inadmissible, ask Emma."

"She's very correct." Erik didn't like Emma agreeing. "Violation of the Fourth Amendment and all that. Do you realize how many illegal things I uncover on my commute to and from work? Of course you don't. It's all very compartmentalized, and of course Charles was tracking it for his own information should the investigation have uncovered that the organized crime might have been involved in your investigation. It might have simply been a very poor life decision on the part of Mr. Rayne."

Erik looked at the marks again. "Shit." Where had he seen that before? "The neighbor. Mitchell."

Raven pulled up Charles' notes. "Him too," she confirmed instantly. "It might not be related."

"Xavier asked him something about cars, 'motor sports' actually." He was going to _kill_ Xavier after he turned up not dead - and he would turn up not dead. He was not going to have a fit over this. Why was it so damn impossible to keep a single, fluffy haired empath safe? "Alex, get me cross references on Mitchell and Rayne. Angel, keep on the mutant databases. I'm getting a coffee."

Alex caught his eyes when Erik stormed passed. The kid's eyes were hard, but Erik could see the implicit 'you okay, Boss?' in them, and he gave Alex a nod that seemed to settle the teen down.

Raven was right behind him, hand landing on Erik's arm before they were even out of the center of the bullpen. "Erik... It's... complicated." Erik didn't want to hear it right now, but Raven stayed on him, barely a half-step behind him even though she was much shorter. "Charles doesn't keep a lot for himself, Erik, it's always for others. Yaknow, when he was in high school people would come up to him and ask 'does so and so like me?' that sort of stuff. What are you even supposed to say? No? Yes? He keeps _everyone's_ secrets. It's not even _really_ legal for him to keep those sorts of notes, you know. What was he going to say?" And suddenly Charles' voice was coming out of Raven's mouth and it was the most disconcerting thing he's seen all day. "I say, old boy, I think we should root around this pizza parlor for various indications of organized crime."

"Charles wouldn't say that."

Raven's real voice was back, the calm, no nonsense woman. "No, he wouldn't, and not just because I sound ridiculous. You're upset with him."

"I thought your brother was the one with the mind wammy powers."

"I'm not blind," Raven answered. "Of course you're mad with him. He's your partner and he kept things from you, things you thought were important. That's... just always going to be the way it is with an empath. Knowing everything is _hard_." She picked up one of the paper cups next to the coffee machine while Erik poured his own coffee. "One day... he gave me every emotion he felt that day off everyone else around him, I thought I was going to explode."

"I wouldn't have gone in to bust them or something. I do have control." Besides... it wouldn't have been MCIS jurisdiction unless it was run by mutants or involved the exploitation of mutants.

"Just would have dropped an anonymous tip somewhere? Given someone a nudge? Left a note somewhere with a clue?" Raven poured herself a cup of coffee, too, throwing all sorts of cream and sugar in it afterwards. "No. Can. Do. The very first thing they teach you in mindwammy school? Self-control. I'm not saying you're impulsive, because I don't know you, but..."

He was impulsive, and he would have considered all of the things she mentioned. "Is David going to be ok?"

"We have a manny," Raven answered, easily. She took a sip of coffee, grimaced and put even more creamer in it. "I don't think the kidnappers know Charles very well. If you want to get to Charles, you don't kidnap him... I mean, you kidnap him, but you... well you hit the people he cares about."

Erik watched the sick thought bloom in the back of her mind and horror spread across her face as she fumbled for her phone and pressed a contact. It rang twice, Erik found he was holding his own breath as well. Raven left the phone on speaker for him.

"Hello?" A boy's voice, really, hint of an Irish accent.

"Sean, it's Raven -" She took a deep breath, calming. Sean didn't sound distressed at all. "How's David?"

"He's fine, you know... is something wrong?" Kid was perceptive, at least.

"We're just going to be home late, so take care of everything and don't let David wait up. You know how it is."

"Raven..." There was definitely something in Sean's tone that said he knew, instantly.

"Stop. I can't."

"... Alright. I'll get David some dinner and put him to bed. Call me if anything changes."

"Will do." She hung up, and as tense as she was Erik could still tell she was relieved. "Yeah, they definitely don't know Charles."

Raven took a sip of the coffee again, finally not grimacing.

"So... Summers was involved in something..." Erik started walking back to the bullpen, Raven trailing after him. "Something that possibly involved illegalities. Charles said that Mitchell - that's the victim's neighbor - liked mutants."

"Liked or _liked_."

"Are you five years old?"

Raven shrugged. "It's a valid question. Some humans fetishize."

He hated the thought as soon as he had it, but he realized Raven must have dealt with that... daily, possibly hourly when she was in the company of hormonal boys. "Charles... I think he said he had an 'underlying fondness'. Summers - the victim, he wasn't... well, he usually took suppressants for his looks."

"Could go either way." Raven took a few more steps, and Erik watched as she staggered, struggling to hold onto her coffee. "Ow..."

"Ow?"

"Charles is awake." He opened his mouth to ask more but she shushed him after only a moment. Chastised, he helped her back to the bullpen and sat her down.

"What's this?" Emma asked, her fingers reaching up to touch Raven's temples gently. "Is he in there?"

Raven nodded. "Scared-oww." Another moment. "Oww."

She didn't say anything for several long seconds, Erik looked towards Emma for an explanation. "Xavier broke the connection," Emma answered.

"Why?" If Xavier had a connection with Raven, something that he would be able to use to communicate with them, why wasn't he using it?

"He didn't want me to feel it," Raven whispered.

Stupid, noble... ridiculously squishy empathy. Erik was going to kill him. Emma looked at him, eyebrow arched, but Erik ignored her pointedly.

"We do have a lead, this pizza worker?" Erik's eyes traveled over the group at large, hopeful.

"Of course," Emma's voice was cold, precise, and sent a spike of ice down his spine. "Because our kidnapped Agent's sister wants pizza - inadmissible - and the Agent himself felt some criminal activity when he was conducting an interview on a different topic - inadmissible - and then now that we've put that all together we know... absolutely nothing."

Damn her. Erik gritted his teeth.

"Alex, any good news?" He turned to the younger mutant and waited.

"Their financials are... well I shouldn't have looked, even, but they're clean, just the usual, salary, rent, bills. There's nothing funny with them."

Erik pressed his fingers into his forehead, subconsciously mirroring Charles' gesture when emotions were just a little too high. "Mitchell's job?"

"Used car parts." Alex shrugged, apologetic. Erik gave him a grimace that he hoped Alex took to mean he wasn't upset - even if he was. Used car parts was an obvious potential front.

"Well then we'll just--"

"In-ad-miss-able," Emma sing-songed at him. "MacTaggart, you really never should have given him an empath - or a telepath. Besides, there are plenty of perfectly legitimate and law abiding used parts dealers."

He wants to wipe that blase look off her face. She's not on a team, she doesn't have 'people', and so she doesn't understand that Erik has a commitment, even from day one, to the very annoying man who somehow seemed to have wriggled under his skin. They were a team.

Xavier had a son at home who wasn't worried for him yet.

Raven looked at Emma, eyes hard and yellow. "We can worry about a case later!"

Emma cocked her head to the side, considered both of them, and shrugged. She looked at MacTaggart - Moira's own eyes were hard, unreadable. "Get me _anything_ solid," she told them. "Anything, and we'll go, but not until then."

Solid? How were they supposed to get anything solid sitting around and kicking ideas around? The jobs that their two witnesses had seemed to be - at least on the surface - clean. How Charles had managed to pick up otherwise was anyone's guess - crazy strong empath indeed - but what they were supposed to do with that was beyond him. Erik excused himself, headed into the restroom and tried to wash the lure of sleep out of his eyes. He had been up since six and working since eight, and now it was nearing eight in the evening, his partner, his team mate, kidnapped.

The door to the restroom opened and he glanced over his shoulder. Emma. "You seem to have gotten attached, Lehnsherr."

"This isn't a unisex." He doubted that had escaped her noticed, but apparently Emma wasn't concerned with propriety and pleasantries at the moment. She just cocked her head to the side, waiting for a real response. "He's..." He frowned at her. She already knew what he was thinking, why did he need to put it into words.

"He's--?"

"Not what I've come to expect in an empath." Which was good, because empaths - and he lumped telepaths in as well, he supposed - were uniformly... Emma-ish, and he didn't care for her chilliness or her presumption. "I'm going to keep him on my team. MacTaggart gave me him to mess with me, but... he's good, especially for a rookie."

Emma smiled, an actual smile, that actually lit up her face, barely. "You wouldn't call him a rookie if you'd been inside of his mind."

She touched him, her fingers against the back of his neck, and without him being exactly aware of where it came from, an address formed in his mind - a garage near the pizza parlor - and directions of how to get there. _"Take Raven with you, she'll give you your exigent circumstances when you get close enough."_

"How--?"

The connection between them broke when he fingers dropped away and he shivered, the chilly touch of her mind warming slowly. "I don't think they understood what he was when they took him." Erik didn't understand... they didn't know he was an empath? Didn't know Emma and Raven could track him?

"Why?" Because he needed to know why she would do this for him. Raven had said this wasn't proper, even Moira and Emma had.

"It's not for you Lehnsherr." That was all that she said on the matter.

As much as it galled him to take her word for it, his heart was racing when he stormed out of the restroom and took Raven with him 'to bring back some dinner'.


	6. Chapter 6

They were a few blocks away from headquarters, Erik's mind racing as he tried to get himself ready for a hunt - he probably should have brought more backup, but he didn't want Alex or Angel getting tangled up in this, and anything more conspicuous would have certainly aroused MacTaggart's suspicion.

"Erik. We're not actually heading out to get food are we?"

"Not unless we count going out to rescue your brother."

"Did Emma tell you where he is?" Raven asked. She was bright, cheerful, and then her face fell. "That's so not cool..." She bit her lip, looking out the window. "Charles won't like it."

Erik gripped the wheel, not really caring.

"He was in enough pain that he didn't want to keep contact with you, Raven. I think he'll forgive us."

Raven hugged her knees to her chest, looking out the window. "I shouldn't... but he's my brother. You've got to help me get him back, unharmed."

Erik didn't answer. Of course he would. There was never any question.

"It's that way!" Raven scrambled, pushing herself desperately, she pressed her hand to the car window. "Charles! Charles can you hear me?"

Exigent circumstances... That was the direction towards the address Emma had given him. Erik's head was throbbing, he felt exhausted. Only a few moments later he realized that Charles was mentally bleeding all over the place, his mind touched loosely to his and to Raven's.

"Are you going to be alright to help?" He knew the girl had training, but it was hard not to take the pretty, blonde form she preferred when pretending to be human to heart. She was a young girl, and Charles would be very cross if she got injured.

"Of course." Her tone was no-nonsense, and he didn't think he'd win any favors by doubting her.

Erik reached into the glove compartment, pulled out a long tube of ball bearings and handed one to Raven. She frowned at it. "So I can keep track of you."

Raven smiled. "Oh. I got used to Charles always knowing where I am..." Still, she tucked the ball away in her pocket. "Do you want me to go in as the red guy, myself, something else?"

"Go in as me," Erik answered, easily. Hopefully that will confuse them some.

Raven shifted easily into his face, his body - it was amazing, and terrifying. "Erik... I mean Lehnsherr... you do know that..."

Erik touched her shoulder - his - it was weird. "He'll be fine, I promise." The dull throbbing in the back of his head told him that Charles was somewhere, probably hooked into his head in a way that made him a little uncomfortable, but glad for the presence.

That was the wrong answer, it seemed, but she nodded anyway, out of the car just a moment later. "We're coming, Charles."

The wariness in the back of Erik's mind dissipated, and it was replaced with something more comfortable. "Is your brother supposed to be in my head?"

"He's going to want to try to help us, just... listen to him, believe me."

Erik looked over at himself, looked at the way Raven hunched slightly where he was standing taller. She looked at him, an emotion he didn't quite understand flickered across his own features. "Be careful, and trust Charles."

Charles was the one who had gotten kidnapped and was possibly being tortured. Trust didn't really get into it, but he wasn't going to tell Raven that right this minute. The building they were parked near was some sort of garage or warehouse, and Erik snuck up along the perimeter, peeking over into one of the windows. The rooms were dark. He bit his cheek to keep from cursing. He looked again. Light coming out from under one of the doors. He pointed. Raven - still disguised as him - came up right next to him and peeked as well.

The door to the warehouse opened with a brief twist of Erik's hand, he led the way in, Raven following close behind him.

Danger. The sense crept up his spine. Not the debilitating feeling that Charles had given him when they had sparred, but he recognized it for what it was. Erik glanced at Raven and she nodded, felt it too. He wished Charles was more specific. Did they know Erik and Raven were here?

Assurance.

"Charles..." Raven was whispering, low, under her breath, Erik's own low voice rumbling just barely audible.

Erik tensed, nerves flaring again and he was on high alert just before the red mutant appeared beside him, a sword flashing. Erik almost laughed at that. Prepared by Charles' early warning, he crushed the metal, wrapping it hard around the mutant's wrist and flinging him away with it. He teleported in mid fling.

His posture eased, barely. Raven came up close to him and they continued, now running towards the door instead of pretending that they were going to be able to hide their approach. The teleporting mutant was back, this time approaching Raven, his tail lashed out, wrapped around her throat.

 _"Raven!"_ Erik winced, shaking off the sound of Charles in his head somehow. He grabbed a ball bearing and shot it out towards the mutant, ramming through the man's shoulder. As soon as he punched through his body, the make-shift bullet stopping in mid air. With his mind, Erik grabbed the sword he'd curled around the mutant's arm and dragged him back in his direction.

As soon as the mutant was close, Erik grabbed him, pushed him to the ground and punched him. His anger coiled up in his chest. He realized, belatedly, that he should have brought a suppression collar, but it was too late for that.

The mutant lashed out again, tail wrapping around Erik's throat, choking him.

A moment later they were teleporting. Erik - who had previously been on top - found his back slammed against the ground. Winded, he glanced up, wicked gleam in the eyes of the other mutant as the tail choked him tighter. His mind reached for the ball bearings in his pocket, they spilled out over the floor.

He grabbed them, flinging them towards the mutant.

 _"Erik, please don't!"_ Charles? Charles was in his head.

Erik couldn't breathe to answer.

 _"Please, calm your mind. Grab him, his throat."_ He was definitely going insane, but he grabbed the mutant around his throat, pressed, and was rewarded by the mutant collapsing almost right away. Erik rolled him off, confused; he hadn't put nearly enough pressure on the mutant to make him pass out. He looked around to see Charles tied to a chair, blindfold covering his eyes, hands bound to a chair.

He scrambled to his feet, looked down at the mutant and then scrambled over to Charles.

"Are there others? Charles, are you alright?" Erik grabbed the bonds around Charles' wrist, tugged, grabbed for some metal and formed a small knife.

"No..."

"What?" He cut one of the cords and Charles put his hand on his chest and _pushed_ him away, violent.

 _"Stay away, stay away, stay away..."_

"Charles!" Raven shouted from the other room - maybe in response to Charles' mental litany.

"He's alright." Erik called back.

Raven banging through the door and standing just a few feet from him, morphing back into her blue form. "Charles?"

She got close enough to tug the blindfold off and Erik was shocked to see how wild Charles' eyes were. "Raven..."

Raven tilted her head, peered at him. "They gave you something?"

Charles nodded. "Couldn't get the collar off... gave me a boost."

Charles pupils were blown to a huge size; still, despite the light, his blue eyes barely visible in the sea of black. He looked high, beyond high. "Is that why he's... telepathic?"

Raven looked away, Charles looked down.

"You... you were always telepathic."

"Yes."

Erik felt his hand knot into a fist, a moment later he decked Charles, brief pain flaring through his hand as he connected. The telepath fell out of his chair, moaning, forehead pressed to the ground as he struggled to catch his breath.

"Erik!" Raven darted between them, hands outstretched to ward him off. "Erik, don't. He's not in his head right now."

"He shouldn't have lied to me!" He practically spit at the girl. His fists grabbed at her shirt, bunching fabric under his hands. He'd started to trust Charles, maybe even like him, and the man had been hiding something like this from him.

"What did you want him to say?" Raven shot back, fist hitting his sternum hard enough to wind him. "It's supposed to be..."

"Raven!" Charles gasped. "Stop it. Stop." Charles had rolled onto his knees, pulling the other tie on his wrist loose and massaging it as he slumped over his knees, limp. "Raven, would you check the rest of the rooms for more evidence. I would like to speak to Erik."

Raven glanced between them, and Erik caught her dubious look. She didn't want to leave them alone, and the little fleck of blood at the corner of Charles' mouth was justification enough of that. Still, she nodded and headed around to some of the other rooms. Charles moved his legs, collapsed backwards so he could look up at the ceiling, breathing ragged.

"I am sorry," Charles said, and Erik couldn't stay quite as mad at the man as he wanted with the telepath sprawled on the ground like that looking pathetic. "Oh, thanks for that. Pathetic?"

As much as he would have liked to stay angry with Charles, his comment did make him smile. "Do you need me to get the collar off?"

"No, I don't think that's a good idea. I already have a wicked headache and that will only make it worse." Charles was carefully running his fingers against his temples, eyes closed now. "I'm - in a word - high. I make it a point not to take boosters because they _fry your brain_ , so I can't say that I'm used to the feeling."

Erik set down next to Charles, watching his face contort as he sucked in air through clenched teeth. He was still mad at Charles, mad at him for getting kidnapped, for getting drugged, for... being a telepath and not telling him. He didn't want the man in his mind. He'd agreed to those empathic nudges, but now... now he wasn't so sure.

"You're thinking very loudly, Erik." Charles sighed, still remaining sprawled almost bonelessly against the floor. "You were really never supposed to know."

"You're shit at keeping secrets."

"I'm _fantastic_ at keeping secrets. You caught me on an off day. If I cared less I would have just let you get stabbed." Erik highly doubted that. "Alright, you're right, I wouldn't have, but the point remains..."

Charles trailed off, fingers still pressed into his temples. "What point?"

"Oh, just that being in your mind makes it difficult to not talk when you're in danger. And... I didn't want you killing that mutant. He'd not operating entirely under his own volition and I would hate for him to be killed or injured for something he did under duress."

Erik realized - rather belatedly - that Charles was ridiculous. Charles laughed almost as soon as he had the thought, hands flipping hair out of his face.

"Do you have enough for us to make a case, or leads to follow?"

"Of course, however I'm certain that Raven has made you more than aware of the limitations of such knowledge. No, I'm afraid that would have to come out in an interrogation, of the subject's own accord." Charles looked up at Erik, eyes slightly less blown wide. "I'm sorry, my friend."

"Not your friend..." Hurt flared in the back of his own mind, and across Charles' face before he looked away and the emotion dissipated. He sighed, thinking back to what Charles had said about the care and feeding of Charles Xavier. There was probably a chapter on not glaring daggers at him. "You know who the killer is, and why, and you're not going to tell me."

"You don't have to make it sound so personal. I really _can't_ , Erik." Charles finally managed to scramble upwards, so they were sitting across from each other rather than Erik looking down at Charles where he sprawled. Very blue eyes, sad and earnest, looked at him. "It won't always be this way, you know. Most people who are criminals have strong mental shields, developed over time. Next time, I'm sure I will be entirely in the dark."

Assuming their was a next time... the thought lingered in Erik's head, and he knew Charles must have heard it, he seemed incapable of _not_ hearing at the moment.

"Are you done?" Raven yelled from the next room. "We should probably get going."

Neither of them responded. "Erik..." Charles moved slowly, wincing with obvious aches and pains. The telepath used Erik's shoulder for a hand up. "I want you to know... I could take what we've just talked about from you, I _should_ if I were being entirely honest with myself."

Erik tensed, reaching for metal around him and realizing that, short of killing Charles, he probably couldn't stop him.

"No, you couldn't. But, I have already promised to not give you reasons to distrust me, and that, for better or worse, means not taking away your reasons to distrust me. I could make you forget, but I won't." Charles squeezed Erik's shoulder, something like comfort or hope or trust or something flared in his spine. _"Please, let that be enough."_.

Erik wasn't certain he was supposed to hear that last, spoken in his mind instead of his ears.

"Charles?" Raven's voice came from the other room again.

"Leave it, Raven. We should get out of here before our friend wakes up." He ran his fingers over his own suppression collar. "I would have you use mine, but I'm still not in the best frame of mind."

Charles gave Erik a weak smile, and wrapped an arm under the mutant's arm and shoulder. Erik mirrored the gesture, taking most of the weight. Raven grabbed the mutant's feet and they carried him out towards the car.

He could _feel_ Raven giving him looks in the back of his head, and he even shot her a look over his shoulder, confused and irritated. A few moments later, he realized that she was trying to figure out if Charles had already mind wammied him or not. She glowered at Charles.

"Raven, I'm not going to, end of discussion."

Apparently he'd missed that discussion. He sighed. They ended up with the mutant sprawled out in the back seat. Erik didn't bother with cuffs, they would hardly be useful if the mutant actually woke up. Charles ended up in the front seat with Raven perched on his lap.

A low conversation that Erik was pretending not to hear buzzed in his ear. Raven was, apparently, very pointedly, attempting to convince Charles he really should do 'what he was supposed to' and take Erik's memories of what Charles had done.

"Raven, please, just stop it." His sister prodded his side with a pointed finger and Charles yelped, causing Erik to swerve violently for a moment. "Please don't do that either..."

A quick glance to the siblings showed that Raven had _hiked up Charles' shirt_ and was now staring at a collection of red marks that were now slowly bruising.

"We need to get you to a hospital," Raven said. Erik mentally tried to remember where the nearest hospital was, but couldn't.

"Nothing is bleeding internally, I'll be fine, really."

"You're an idiot."

"Yes, but a very clever one." Charles put his hands on Raven's shoulders, squeezing. "I'm fine, really. The last thing I need right now is to go to a hospital while my mind is in the state it is right now."

Erik looked over at the two of them, Raven was now carefully curled up in Charles' arms and the man was holding her in a tight hug. All forgiven, apparently. The girl - and Charles - might not have appreciated him thinking it, but Charles made a particularly excellent father-type when it came down to it. David was a lucky kid.

Charles looked over towards Erik, and he caught the telepath's gaze out of the corner of his eye. "I see you've finally gotten around to reading my personnel file."

"You were kidnapped. It could have been personal."

"I'm glad it wasn't." He sighed, fingers ghosting down Raven's back and the girl pressed her nose into Charles' neck, sitting there.

"How have you passed for so long?" It was the question that was on the tip of his mind now that they were out of immediate danger.

"Most mutants manifest around puberty, a little earlier, a little later, I manifested nearly from birth so when the 'find out if you're a mutant' stuff started up in high school I was more than ready to pass as an empath." Charles leaned back, a pose Erik was becoming more and more familiar with - an exhausted Charles Xavier who probably needed a nap very badly. "I could have passed for human in some countries, actually, but not here."

Questions formed in Erik's mind, picking at the idea of Charles being a telepath rather than an empath. The biggest question, however, was why Charles would risk detection, put himself in the midst of dozens of people, every day, who would be watching him, making sure he didn't slip, and might notice if his powers were much more robust than advertised.

"Don't worry about it, Erik. It's not every day I'm going to be kidnapped by mutants and strung out on psychic booster drugs. Thank god."

Raven hugged him, curled into his chest even though Charles was wincing against her intrusion.

"I'm more concerned about the sort of man who claims to be one thing, but is actually another, waltzing into secure facilities." Because Emma, at least, was routinely subjected to external 'auditing', but Charles might be less regulated.

"There is no good way for me to answer that, Erik. I hope you will consider trusting me, regardless."

No.

Charles sighed. "I recommend you pick up the pace, our mutant friend might find himself awake sooner than I would like and I would hate to have him escape. He's our best chance of building a case against Michael Summers' murderers."

"Murderers, plural?"

"Yes. You are not going to like the answers we find for the case, Erik. Please prepare yourself for that as much as you are able."

Erik wasn't certain how he was supposed to prepare for being surprised, but he wasn't particularly interested in finding out. Xavier was a fucking telepath, on his team, in his head, and he already knew way too much about this case. Erik didn't like it one bit.

Charles didn't respond, despite his sister curled into his chest he looked troubled and wary, a few quick glances towards Erik as he drove filled with worry. Erik would keep his secret, for the moment, but he was still waiting to figure out why Charles was going to trust him and what the hell his presence on his team meant. Was he a spy? A double agent? Something else entirely?

The ideas fumbled around in his mind, finding no clean answers, and Charles left him to his thoughts, ignoring them and not breaking the uneasy peace between them.


	7. Chapter 7

They got the mutant into MCIS headquarters and slapped into a null collar before he managed to wake up. Moira and Emma and the others were still scrambling around the bullpen when a tired looking Raven and Erik, and a beat up and exhausted looking Charles, brought the mutant up and deposited him on the floor.

Moira's eyelid twitched. "I thought you were going to get dinner."

"Awww, I wanted Chinese food," Alex whined, smirking like a teenager.

Angel looked down at the mutant and handed over a tablet for Erik to look at. "The mutant's name is Azazel, he's Russian. No entry records into the country, but seeing as his power is being able to teleport anywhere on the globe that means very little."

Erik whistled, suitably impressed.

"Lehnsherr," Moira growled. "What the hell do you think you were doing?"

"My fault," Raven answered before Erik could. "Completely my fault. We were debating the merits of pizza versus chinese and then I got a feeling from Charles in the back of my head. We couldn't _not_ go. He was hurt, yanno?"

Erik looked between Raven and Moira. Moira tilted her head towards Emma, and the woman's eyes raked over Raven and Erik.

Don't think about the fact that Charles is a telepath! Which was... exactly the wrong thing to think when Emma's eyes were locked with his. Her head tilted slightly, Charles hung his head, trying to hide something that looked like a laugh that he passed for a tired huff. He was very bad at this mental shielding thing.

 _"Yes, Lehnsherr, you are."_ Emma's voice crackled through his mind. "It checks out, MacTaggart. It's exigent circumstances. Really was bound to happen if someone Xavier was close to got out of HQ."

"Right..." Moira's eyes swept over Emma's, obviously not positive she could trust the telepath, but, if you couldn't trust a telepath, who could you trust.

"Xavier, you look like shit."

Charles gave Emma a very cocky and weak smile. "Very likely."

Erik watched, feeling slightly awkward when he saw Emma walk over to Charles and place a hand gently on his shoulder and maneuvered him out of the room. He realized that was probably going to be an interesting conversation between Charles and Emma. He hadn't asked, but now he had to wonder if Emma had known what he had just casually blurted out - mentally. He was an idiot.

 _"Don't be too hard on yourself, my friend."_

 _"Out of my head, Charles!"_

 _"It's fine, really. Emma and I already have our understanding."_

That didn't make him feel much better. The telepath in charge of assuring that all of their agents were on the up and up apparently already knew Charles' little secret. He wondered if Moira knew...

 _"Don't."_

Charles owed him all sorts of explanations. All sorts.

"Erik?" Raven was looking up at him, hand on his shoulder, shaking him just slightly. "You were a million miles away." The grin on her face said she knew exactly where his mind had been.

"Sorry." He turned towards the team. "Alright, so, Azazel. Known associates?"

Angel shrugged slightly. "We're waiting for the full file to be transfered over. It sounds like this might get kicked up to one of the mutant divisions at another agency..."

"Absolutely not." Erik looked at MacTaggart but she just shrugged. "Mutants. It's in the name Mutant Criminal Investigative Services. I'm not kicking this over to a bunch of human suits with anti-psy training." Because, of course, mutants weren't _allowed_ in the FBI or the CIA or any of those other agencies. MCIS or nothing. They were good enough to shove into special regiments that were filled with people with extraordinary abilities, but as soon as it came time to actually do something to protect or solve crime they were stuck in this little ... ghetto. He gritted his teeth.

"If they try to take the case from us there's nothing I can do, outside of keeping you in as liaisons." Moira didn't sound particularly conciliatory.

"Fine. We'll just solve it first." He clenched his jaw and looked over at Alex and Angel. "Get the furry red guy to interrogation, I want Charles or Emma to take a crack at him, ASAP."

"Um..." Alex looked down at the floor, a little awkward. "You did shoot him. He needs medical care."

"Then get him a band-aid and _then_ put him in interrogation." Erik's voice was a firm and assured 'do I make myself clear?' and Alex's face said that he did.

Angel handed him over what little they had - no history, no background, just a face and finger prints and powers. That was the absolute minimum that tended to be in the international databases. Raven took the tablet from him, tilting it from side to side, almost like she was trying to see the mutant from a few angles. "Charles will be able to get into his head. He's good."

"Maybe we should use Emma. She is a telepath." And Charles wasn't supposed to be.

"Emma would be great if you had a warrant, but you don't. You want Charles, trust me." Warrant... he was sure there was some judge that he could wake up to get one, but they tended to be picky about brain-search warrants. Not that Erik could blame them.

"Alright. I'll let your brother take a crack at it." Part of him wondered if Charles was good at this because he was a telepath, but he seemed to have a pretty strong wall between the two different ways he used his powers. There was no way he would have been able to pass for so long if he wasn't careful.

"Speak of the devil," Raven said. Charles had returned, looking dazed. "Agent Lehnsherr wants you to do an interrogation, are you up for it?"

Charles shook his head. "Food first."

Erik gritted his teeth, they were wasting time; Charles just took him by the elbow and dragged him off.

"I am a recent graduate student. I will manage from the vending machines, Erik." Charles sighed, but he looked a lot less worn than he had just a little bit ago. He completely didn't want to think about what he and Emma had just done. It probably involved mindsex. "Really? Is that where you mind always goes?"

He realized, belatedly, that Charles was right, that was apparently where his mind went, but Emma did spend a great deal of time looking like she was going to eat Charles. It was disturbing.

Charles smirked in front of the vending machine, feeding it money to get some sort of - likely very old - sandwich, an apple that actually didn't look moldy, and a bag of chips. The telepath ripped open the bag and offered one to Erik, which he took, and the two of them leaned against the vending machines.

"It was mostly just a... brain massage, basically. It allowed me to bleed off some of the fatigue, the other party doesn't even need to be telepathic. And it's not mindsex, because I do this with Raven, and I'm not in to mindincest. Really, Erik, I thought I was single minded."

Erik didn't dignify that with a response. "More care and feeding of Charles Xavier?"

Charles nodded, somehow balancing the open sandwich container, an apple and a bag of chips in one arm while he picked at the food, scarfing it down. "I'm very picky."

Picky was not exactly the word Erik would have used to describe Charles currently plowing through anything edible in the vending machine. He really did look like a college student, possibly on a break between studying for finals.

"Yes, thank you for that. I am a grown man, actually, despite all evidence to the contrary." He took a bite of the apple he'd gotten, chewing slowly.

"This is something big, isn't it?"

Charles shrugged, a non-answer, especially compared to what he had gotten in the car.

"The mutant who kidnapped you, Azazel, we asked for his file and it sent up all sorts of flags, it's likely one of the human agencies is going to want to take over, maybe as early as tomorrow."

Charles took a final bite of his apple, casually chucking it into the waste bin across the room. "Now that we've bagged him, you mean?" Charles sighed, running fingers through his hair. "I'll have to work quickly on him if we want to keep this in house, then?"

"I don't trust humans with these things." And he didn't care who knew it. MCIS was a tiny agency, they dealt only with mutant crime or crime on mutants, and even a lot of that went to the regular police if there didn't seem to be 'mutant connections' with the crime.

Charles took a bite of his sandwich, chewing slowly before he finally swallowed. "We're all part of the same world."

Erik disagreed, but decided he wasn't going to win that argument any time soon. "I want to do this. In house."

"I didn't say no. I'm just opposed to fainting manfully in the middle of an interview." He finished the last of his sandwich and three chips, before chucking the trash as he headed out of the room.

Erik followed him close, more than a little curious about how a telepath, pretending to be an empath, would work a suspect when everything he might be able to pluck out of his mind was inadmissible in court. He... tended to conduct his own interviews, really, even on suspects. He knew Emma was capable of it, but he never had really seen her at work. Mostly he didn't like Emma.

The thought didn't seem to bother Charles, or Emma, who was waiting for them just by Charles' desk.

"Curious, Frost?" Erik asked, not quite able to resist baiting her.

"I do want to see how Xavier works," she admitted with a bland sort of smile that Erik couldn't read.

The two of them walked towards interrogation, side by side, faint amusement projecting behind them from Charles. He and Emma entered, followed closely by Charles, who looked himself over in the mirror before mussing up his hair and rolling up his sleeves. Moira stood over by the monitor that was recording Azazel's every move.

"Charles," she reached up, put a hand near his throat, and Charles let her remove the collar.

Erik had almost expected to feel the difference, but he didn't, and then Charles left the room, returning a moment later on the other side of the glass.

"Azazel, pleasure to meet you. I'm Charles Xavier."

"I have rights." Azazel shot back, immediately.

Charles paused for a moment, at first Erik thought it was surprise, but it was... too measured, too smooth. "Well, that's an interesting thing about your ability. I suppose _technically_ your lawyer might be able to argue that you are not, technically, in violation of the Registration Act, as you likely didn't come in through traditional travel corridors. I think you won't find the judge particularly sympathetic, however."

The telepath took a seat across from the mutant, touching his fingers to the cool metal of the table. A moment later, Charles shifted so he was leaning against his arm, finger touched to his forehead. Azazel's face hardened in response.

"I don't have to answer your questions, either."

"No, you don't," Charles answered, and Erik sort of wanted to knuckle the man's head, because, really that wasn't the way you conducted interviews with a suspect. "But I thought you might like to know what we have on you at the moment, in addition to the rather harrowing kidnapping from earlier today. I will say, good job, I was quite... harrowed."

"Shut up."

"Really. Excellent work. I would have sworn you've done it before."

Azazel glowered at him, not answering. Erik continued to watch, arms crossed in front of his chest now as he watched Charles work.

"Our government is... really very interested in you Azazel. I'm certain you know the feeling." Erik tilted his head, watched the monitor to see the look on Charles' face, bored, almost. "You tipped your hand a little, didn't you? Getting me when you did. Before I got my collar off, before I was outside the walls that are _supposed_ to guard against mutants doing exactly what you just did. You have a very groovy mutation, my friend."

Azazel still didn't answer. Charles tapped his finger to his temple again, and Erik turned his head towards the monitor, then back to Azazel.

"Do you know how many agencies are waiting to get their hands on you? Really?"

There was a flicker of something across Azazel's face that Erik couldn't read, Charles didn't even blink, the same friendly face, but Erik imagined the man had caught it, too.

"Your name, your registration, they made a _lot_ of humans happy when you popped up here, in our hands, null collar around your throat." The conversational tone of voice grew almost bored, Erik frowned, trying to figure Charles' game. "Can you feel it there? Itching at the back of your mind, clawing at you when you go to think and it's just black and empty? You feel as though you're sucking in air so heavy you could almost drown in it. How does it feel? How long do you think you are going away for, kidnapping a federal agent?"

Azazel didn't answer, and Erik felt the back of his neck tingle, just creeped out by how weird Charles seemed in that moment. He wondered if that was how Charles felt, or if he was pulling that idea out of Azazel's mind. It didn't matter, the effect was obvious, the nervous flick of the eyes, the fear, the concern were all playing across the mutant's eyes. That collar he was wearing terrified him.

"Where would you like to go for your sentence, then? CIA? FBI? NSA? Some other organization without enough oversight to need a three letter acronym?"

Erik bristled at the idea of Charles turning the man over, but Emma's hand on his shoulder calmed him down, enough that he thought she might have used at least a touch of her ability on him. "Charles is just twisting his arm." He glanced at her, her face was sheet white, her throat bobbed up and down from a hard swallow. Whatever Charles was doing in there was not being kind to Emma. He'd never seen her so out of sorts.

"I don't want to go to any of them."

"Then make me happy."

"What do you want me to say?"

"The name of Michael Summers' killer and the motive."

Azazel didn't say anything, mouth hard in defiance. Charles must have pushed too hard, too fast. He leaned back in his chair, and Erik watched in the monitor as Charles' eyes fluttered closed slightly, like he was thinking. "No?" Charles shrugged, got up from the table.

"You're not going to let me get turned over," Azazel said, shooting a look towards the one-way mirror behind Charles' back. "You want to keep me in house, yes? Mutant solidarity."

"My boss out there? She's a human. Do you think she cares?" Charles leaned up against the door, looking bored. "I think she gets a bonus for kicking interesting foreign mutants into programs."

Azazel's eyes moved between the mirror and Chalres, and Erik could see him wondering whether or not Charles was telling the truth. Erik knew Moira wasn't the sort - but Charles certainly sold it. "Paul Rutledge. He's human... the motive was Summers trying to back out of his end." Erik scrambled for a piece of paper, Moira pulled up a computer as soon as Azazel had spoken, already cross-referencing.

"His end of getting pummeled by other mutants for pay?" Charles asked. Azazel nodded. "You'll have to speak up, please."

"Yes."

"Name and location."

"Hellfire Club... it's in Clinton. I'll give you the address."

Charles shook his head slightly. "Cute." He slid a piece of paper across the table, the man scribbled furiously before he returned the piece of paper to Charles. The telepath stood, walked over to the one way mirror and then pressed the note to the glass. Moira already had the address down. Erik started to pull up financials for the club. Emma stood, stock still, breathing all wrong and too hard. That was how Erik knew there was something more going on.

"Is that it?"

"Yes." Azazel nodded, and Erik was... shocked, really at the way Charles change again, stalking away from the door and towards the other mutant. This wasn't the man he'd had lunch with, this was someone else.

Charles circled around the mutant, fingers touching, over-personal, against the fur near the mutant's neck. "I think there's something else there. Something that makes you nervous, something that you don't want to think about."

Azazel looked Charles in the eye, Erik missed whatever the mutant had seen, though, because of the way Charles was holding himself. "Just say it," Charles urged.

The mutant shook his head.

"What are you going to do, then, when you go back and he whispers in your ear how disappointed he is in you?"

Azazel was up, out of the chair, scrambling away from Charles as though he'd been burned. Erik grabbed the gun at his side, ready to go in if necessary. But he didn't attack, and Charles didn't even seem surprised. "Sebastian Shaw. He runs the Hellfire Club, lots of places."

Erik's blood ran cold. Fucking Sebastian Shaw. Erik had warmer and fuzzier feelings for the Prince of Darkness. Shaw was the reason he didn't have anything, his family, his _life_. Sebastian Shaw was the reason that Erik closed his eyes at night and saw nothing but blood.

 _"Calm, Erik, please... calm."_ He heard Charles' voice even as the man curled his fingers through Azazel's fur, pressing lightly and making soothing noises that you might use on a small child. "I'm not disappointed."

Azazel nodded, taking a deep breath, and Charles turned towards the window, the stranger who had been in the interrogation room gone and 'Charles' back.

"Why me?" Charles asked. "What did Shaw want with me?"

Azazel looked up, and even through the strange fur Erik could read that the mutant was uncomfortable. The glanced towards Emma, _she_ was uncomfortable. There was more there...

"He wanted to... unsettle one of your coworkers." Erik felt his hand squeeze so hard he left impressions in his own palm from his fingernails digging into his hand. "Lehnsherr." Charles' face didn't register surprise. "And he wanted to test your limits, said he heard you were better than good, peerless."

Erik might have missed the movement if he hadn't been watching Charles' face so closely, a very faint narrowing of the eyes. Charles hadn't expected what Azazel had said, and he watched the way the telepath moved his fingers, Emma's own eyes squinting in concentration. One of them - maybe both of them - were rattling around in Azazel's head, at least a touch.

"Well... I am quite good," Charles laughed it off, too slow. Did Shaw know or suspect Charles' little secret? He was beginning to doubt that Charles knew how to keep a secret at all.

"Is that enough?" He turned to Moira, his boss nodded and Erik was out of the room and down to the bullpen in a flash. "Alex, get me Darwin, I was a strike team ready to go, ASAP. Clinton."

"Ye-yeah, Boss." Alex scrambled up from his chair, grabbing the phone to make the call.

He headed back to the interview room, only to see Charles in the hall between the two rooms, leaning up against the wall, breathing ragged and uncontrolled. A soft litany of 'shitshitshit' coming out of his mouth as he tried to calm down.

Erik had a few minutes... really. Darwin was probably somewhere getting as drunk as he could before his liver metabolized it or something, it would be at least a few minutes... He put his hand on Charles' shoulder and watched the man flinch.

"Charles?"

"Fine. I'm fine, Erik. Just... he was scared, and I did everything I could to make him more scared. pulling that out..."

"You were freaking out Emma."

Charles laughed, one of those laughs where you're trying to pretend you don't want to curl up into a ball and cry. "I was freaking me out, too."

Charles grabbed his own throat, ran his hands over the place at his neck where his collar was supposed to be. Erik imagined it choking him, wondered if Charles could feel the ghost of that sensation.

"Do you think Shaw...?" Knows.

Charles shrugged, head resting back against the wall. "Doesn't matter now. You have a strike team to get ready for."

"Do you want to come?" Charles looked even more of a wreck than he had before, and Erik thought what the man really needed was sleep, not more work.

"No. I'm just going to wait for you to get back." Something about Charles' tone was ominous, difficult to dissect.

"You didn't even know about me and Shaw." Charles shook his head. "So there's even more coming that I'm not going to like?" Charles nodded, mouth in a hard line.

"Go home. Tuck your kid in to bed."

"I'll wait up."

"You don't have to."

"Yes I do."


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMFG, thanks everyone for sticking it out with me through my fic! I guess I just wanted to say that, and that this is definitely going to be a multi-part series, I'm thinking BBC mini/full-series length with any luck/motivation/musing. There's like ... arcs planned, and character development. I'm not sure how I talked myself into a fanfic series. Insanity. This is also the time where I'm willing to hear requests for (secondary) ships for the fanfic. I'm very pairing neutral when it comes to everyone except my (obvious) OTP, so please, whoever/whoever, I'm usually game.
> 
> Stay tuned for scenes from the next episode of MCIS.

The authorization for the raid came more quickly than Erik would have expected for almost eleven at night, but they had their marching orders before Erik arrived and strapped into a kevlar vest. Darwin stood easily in the back of a SWAT van a few blocks from the Hellfire Club. He wasn't strapped into a vest or anything, just standing easily in jeans and a dress shirt, going over architectural plans.

"Best we can tell, there is a main club up top, swanky and sociable, and if there's this... mutant fight club going on somewhere it's downstairs."

Erik nodded at the assessment, checking his vest again, nervously, a few scraps of metal already floating around his body as an additional layer of armor and weapon. "I'll go in with your team," Erik said.

Darwin didn't argue. He knew how Erik got about these things and he had an excellent power for non-lethal assaults. Unless they were expecting Erik, most humans - and mutants - didn't guard themselves well enough to resist. Even a button fly, a zip, or a necklace could be an accidental weapon in his hands.

"We expect a lot of civilians," Darwin said to the room at large. "Keep it non-lethal. Erik, you handle downing the civilians you can while we make our assault."

The hit itself was a wild affair, Darwin leading the assault by... casually walking towards the stairs down and punching the bouncer in the face. Erik followed immediately after, using watches, jewelry, and every other bit of metal to drag the mingling bar patrons to the ground. Some stumbled easily, drunk or disoriented, the rest were yanked down as hard as Erik could manage.

"MCIS!" He announced loudly. A few people screamed in response and Erik gritted his teeth with frustration. The rest of the SWAT team followed behind him, Darwin already having cleared the bouncers, one of the team stopped to zip-tie the man and Erik yanked the clip out of the man's guns trailing them behind him like a metal whirlwind.

The downstairs smelled obviously of blood, sweat, and disinfectant, dozens of men and some women crowded around a sunken in pit where the sounds of fighting was muffled behind shouting and yelling of the throng. More men with guns arrived a moment later and Erik twisted them out of their hands, elbowing his way through the crowd and looking down into the pit, a man, made entirely of metal, it seemed, was fighting a much smaller man, the two of them going at each other ferociously.

Erik grabbed the metal one, pulled him up enough so he couldn't touch his opponent, dangling there, helpless. Finally, the two seemed to realize what was going on around them, and the man's attempts to fight fell away and Erik took a deep breath of relief.

Charles' reminder of just a few hours ago rung in his mind. He did not care for this at all, and the near-overwhelming desire to make those responsible pay didn't abate even as the SWAT team closed in on the ring leaders of the operation. The back rooms were filled with everything from chemical and collar suppressants to money made on the gambling that took place.

They rounded up almost forty-five individuals, mostly gamblers, a few organizers, Paul Rutledge, and a half-dozen mutants. The mutants were all in the country illegally, kept locked up and used only for fighting, and there were records of at least another half-dozen mutants like Michael Summers who came in for bouts to earn money on the side. Erik took the ones they found into protective custody, back to MCIS headquarters.

Charles' pursed lips and weary set of his shoulders made Erik realize that the telepath had known exactly what they were going to find there. His frown broke into an easy, relieved smile when Erik returned, trailing the six mutants. Emma stood beside Charles with a few people Erik recognized as moderate empaths - counselors. His suspicion that Charles had known what was coming was easily confirmed by that.

A half hour later, Erik wasn't certain what to do with himself, and he ended up poking at paperwork even though midnight had long since come and gone. The six mutants were scattered around the bullpen, Emma in the midst of talking with one; a young Russian girl was wrapped around Charles while he did his best to comfort her, his fingers touching her shoulders in a way that she obviously found comfortable.

Tomorrow would be some sort of nightmare with immigration, but he was willing to allow himself not to think about that.

Charles ended up by his side before he even noticed, a hand shaking his shoulder lightly.

"Done with your girl?"

"Illyana," Charles answered, sliding up onto his desk, casually. "And yes, she'll be fine."

"You're going to be useless, tomorrow, aren't you?" Charles was obviously running of fumes, his eyes droopy and Erik could feel the exhaustion that Charles was obviously barely holding at bay. The telepath nodded. "So... give me a hint. Care and feeding of Charles Xavier."

"One or two beers and a taxi home," he answered, immediately, head resting on his own shoulder to support himself.

"It's passed midnight." Charles' plan sounded... far better than going home right that moment, though.

The telepath nodded, taking it as a rejection of the idea. He slid off of the desk and pulling together his things. Erik watched him pack away his wallet and keys, slowly poke at his computer to shut it down for the evening and carefully file away any papers that were laying about. Erik's own movements mirrored Charles, packing up a few papers and pocketing his wallet.

"Raven?" He asked, as the two of them headed out to the elevator.

"Sent her home after I got back to MCIS. She's an intelligence operative, not a field agent."

The door slid closed behind them and they both leaned against the cool metal, Erik feeling more grounded for it, Charles mostly needing it to stay standing. "Why aren't _you_ an intelligence operative?"

Charles smiled, face canting to the side with a slow, lazy smile. "Who says I'm not?"

Erik froze, pieces clicking into place. Charles, registered as an empath but actually a telepath; rated at only needing a grade-A collar in secure facilities even though it clearly left him functional; friendly and flirty, with a manner that inspired quick confidences. Charles who could pick into your mind and pull anything out without you even feeling it.

"Most intelligence operatives don't blow their cover on their first day."

"I must not be one, then," he answered.

Erik gritted his teeth. He amended his assessment, Charles was friendly, flirty, and massively annoying. When he tilted his head to look at the telepath, the man was smiling, just a soft little smirk.

"Or maybe I trust you, Erik."

He turned away. "You don't know anything about me."

"I know everything about you."

If that was the case, then Charles wouldn't trust him at all. It was just a boast. "Am I your target?" Erik snorted, realizing how silly it was to ask. "Would you even tell me if I was?"

"No." The answer was typical of Charles.

"I changed my mind about the drinks."

Charles grinned at him. "I assume there's a decent bar in the area that won't mind a couple of muties?" They could both pass, easily, especially Charles without his gloves, but he found he wasn't in the mood for that.

"There had better be, considering we're right by Headquarters."

There were still too many things left unsaid between them, and Erik wasn't sure how Charles fit into their little team, but he was beginning to realize that he wanted the man around - at least to keep an eye on him.

He was barely kidding anyone, least of all himself. Charles could have ingratiated himself easily, he choose not to, and Erik was intrigued. Not that he'd ever let Charles know that. Even if he probably already did, the smug bastard.

Charles, very astutely, ignored commenting on whatever thoughts he might have picked up from Erik, however, and the two of them headed over to X-Bar (which Charles was apparently upset had nothing to do with linguistic theory and everything to do with X-genes). Charles paid for the first round, and the two of them holed up in a corner, surrounded by the press of mutants - many of them with physical mutations - and they toasted their success.

"A job well done, Erik. Those mutants will be safe here - hopefully granted asylum - maybe one or two of them would make good recruits."

They both knew it was unlikely for foreign nationals to become MCIS agents, but they both ignored it in the name of taking a win out of a night that involved mutant trafficking and fighting them like they were dogs. His mind swam with frustration, though. It was hard to say today was a true success. Shaw remained out of touch, for now, but Erik was not going to let that be the end of his hunt.

Charles took a long drink, tilted his head so he caught Erik's eyes where they were downcast, looking at the table they were sitting at instead of the telepath.

"I thought we had an agreement about you not head-shrinking me."

Charles leaned back in his chair, even going so far as to kick his feet up on the booth seat next to Erik, slouched fully under the table. "Is it somewhere in the rules that I'm not allowed to notice you look like crap, feel like crap, and something is obviously rattling around in there, my friend?"

"Yes," he groused. He looked up at Charles' wide and fake-innocent blue eyes. He looked back down, irritatedly peeled at the beer bottle label while Charles scanned the crowd. "Shaw."

Charles nodded. "Azazel's boss, the one who doesn't take failure and disappointment for an answer." He watched the telepath press his fingers to the side of his glass, tilting it from side to side. "The one who wanted to test me... and mess with you."

"Do you know anything about him?" Charles shook his head. "Then you clearly don't know everything about me."

"I thought that would make you happy. Honestly, I didn't go digging, you just project certain things quite loudly. It is impossible for me to not know what you are thinking, not without substantial effort." Charles took another long gulp of beer. "We'll work on that. Emma was-- already aware of my circumstances, but I can't have you doing that out in the field. Keeping up my own pretexts is hard enough without also keeping up yours."

Erik wanted that, desperately. Emma out of his head, Charles out of his head too, really, at least for the parts he wanted to keep to himself. "Tomorrow?"

"Assuming we don't run into any kidnapping and mutant fighting rings tomorrow," Charles answered, all smiles.

"Shaw." Erik said the name, Charles sobered. "He runs..." Erik paused, started over. "I enlisted as soon as I graduated high school, to get money for college. I was... I suppose you would say a late bloomer, when it came to my mutation. When I was home on leave after Basic, our house caught on fire... that's when I..."

He trailed off. He'd lost his daughter Anya that day, burned to death when Erik couldn't get her out in time, and, in the end he had also lost Magda, his fiancee. She'd been dating Erik, her high school sweetheart, someone she hadn't known was a mutant, and then... well an Army private had been good husband material but the doubts had certainly started after he got bumped over to Mutie Special Forces.

"My mutation is... easily weaponizable, controlled demolition, long range sniping... lots of things. Shaw runs one of those private contracting outfits where you can pay to bring the wrath down on any little country you want for the right price. He wanted me, bad. Full telekinetics are damn rare, and everything worth exploding is made of metal anyway."

Erik took a long drink, trying to twist his words around what he wanted to say without giving everything away. Even if Charles could read him like an open book he wanted to at least pretend he had his secrets. "There was a lot of strong arming involved." Covert threats to his family while Erik was away at war, Magda pregnant with the twins and scared out of her mind from whatever people Shaw had sent to make his point. That had been the end of things, via a letter sent to his APO that got delivered a good four months after Madga had written it while Erik was lodged between one sand ball country or another.

At least she'd been good enough to give back the engagement ring.

"I didn't join the Army because I like killing people. I joined because it was the best of a lot of crappy options." And he wanted to help people - but that reasoning was so far buried in the back of his mind he didn't dredge it up often. It wasn't like the steel mills were still running like back in his father's day. Magda'd had a hard enough time getting a job as a waitress in some jewish deli.

"Why do we do anything?" Charles finally answered. "Because we think it's the right thing to do. To protect our families and friends." He was looking wistful now.

At first Erik thought Charles must have pulled that from his mind, Anya, Wanda and Pietro, and Lorna but then he realized... _If you want to get to Charles... you hit the people he cares about._

Charles had his own family, his own reasons. He wondered if that might not be part of the answer that he'd tried to get out of Charles earlier today - only to discover that he'd been talking with Raven, not Charles. Erik found he wanted to ask again, wanted to nudge at the question.

"This wasn't exactly your first choice of places you wanted to be, was it?"

"I wouldn't want to be anywhere else." Charles answer wasn't an answer. Again.

"Can I trust you?"

Charles didn't answer right away, no casual assurance that everything would be fine and Charles was completely trustworthy. Erik wouldn't have trusted that answer anyway, which Charles probably knew. Instead the man took a final, long drink of beer before he started to tease the bottle around, slightly, shifting it this way and that while he thought. "I can't say we'll never be at cross purposes, my friend."

No one could say that.

"I can say that wether or not I am on your team, I will accomplish my goals, and I would very much prefer to do that with you." Charles smiled, soft and amused, self deprecating.

He was very worried about getting shot in the back.

"I don't carry a gun," Charles answered his unspoken thought.

"Is that metaphorical or literal?"

"A little bit of both, my friend." Charles stood, placing his empty at the edge of the table. "Want another?" Erik nodded.

He watched Charles weave through the press of people, dodging effortlessly, hands never coming closer than ghosting against someone, all smiles, bright and cheerful. Erik had no idea why there was something inside of him urging him to trust the man - he almost was worried it was some curl of a thought that Charles had put there. He could tumble it over in his head, though, Charles wasn't going anywhere, someone wanted him here, and it didn't matter if he was on Erik's team or not. It Erik took all of that at face value... maybe it was best to keep the telepath close.

But he couldn't distrust Charles - not really. Even if Charles was playing the longest of long games, pushing and pulling in all the right spots to get Erik to trust him... he could have done it all while still cutting out what had happened in the warehouse. Knowing Charles was a telepath made Charles' job harder, Emma already knew, so she would hardly bring up a gap in his memory when she did her next sweep.

Ultimately, that was what stuck in his mind. Charles had made his life much harder to let Erik keep his memories.

A beer landed in front of him, Charles following soon after, sliding into the booth. "Feeling better?"

Erik scowled at him. "Did you enjoy my running commentary?"

"You are very interesting, Erik, but I cannot keep tabs on you at all times."

Erik looked out over the crowd, wondering how loud that must have been on Charles' mind. "Yes, I'm feeling better."

"Me too," Charles answered, face actually looking relaxed and boyish again.

They finished the rest of their beers and Erik made sure Charles ended up in his aforementioned cab. Erik walked - he lived only a few blocks from work and navigating through the cool night air was pleasant and left him the first uncomplicated moments of his day. Of course, he wasted them thinking complicated thoughts about the telepath that was now in his midst, making his life more difficult.

By the time he was home, however, he was actually relaxed. It had been - all things considered - a good day. Charles was a strong addition to the team, they had sprung six mutants from torture and worse... and he'd gotten a few beers and discovered that a certain amount of head-shrinking was tolerable.

As long as it wasn't from Emma. Or one of the counselors.

Maybe just because it was Charles.

He stripped out of his work shirt and tie almost as soon as he was through the door, shucking them and holding them casually over his shoulder as he trailed through the main room of his apartment. Metalworking projects that might eventually come to something worth sending to the kids for Hanukkah or a birthday lay haphazard by the window, and he ignored them, too tired to attempt art.

Erik even found himself allowing a brief look at the twin picture frames on his dresser that evening. Wanda and Pietro - still too wild for portraiture - climbing over him, faces only half to the camera. Lorna - old enough to stand on her own - waving a shovel and bucket towards the camera.

He grabbed a few hangers with his mind, putting away clothes while he washed up.

Magda didn't like to think about it, Suzanna more ambivalent, but the chances that one of his children would be a mutant was exceptionally high. That's why he did what he did, after all, a better world for mutant kind, and he would do everything he could to see that world for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time, on MCIS:
> 
> Alex: Su-M-94-0708-0034. Christopher and Katherine Summers. My parents.  
> Hank: Just be careful, okay?  
> Charles: You carry around a great deal of fear.  
> Alex: I was only two…  
> Charles: "The mind is a fascinating place - even something that has been completely broken leaves pieces."  
> Alex: Does it hurt?  
> Charles: Oh yes.  
> Erik: We need a janitor for Interrogation Three...  
> Moira: Do I even want to know?
> 
> Charles: A little smiling, a little discussing of groovy mutations… Listening and nodding at appropriate intervals…  
> Erik: I don’t know _what_ it is for you, Charles.  
>  Charles: Even dancing around it is a bad idea. Strong emotions trigger strong mental connections and make your mind easier to read.
> 
> Alex: Mom and Dad are fighting again  
> Hank: You have some weird ideas about how relationships are supposed to work, Alex.
> 
> Erik: You set off a metal detector.  
> Alex, Raven, Angel, Hank, and Darwin: *all laugh*  
> Moira: I don't know why I thought that Xavier was going to be a good influence on you.


End file.
